> Skip to content
Play sample
  • Published: 14 January 2025
  • ISBN: 9780857505347
  • Imprint: Bantam
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $34.99
Categories:

Water Moon





A young woman inherits a Tokyo pawn shop where you can sell your deepest regrets, sparking a dream-like and magical adventure: Before the Coffee Gets Cold meets Studio Ghibli.

On a backstreet in Tokyo lies a pawnshop, but not everyone can find it. Most will see only a cosy ramen restaurant. And just the chosen ones – those who are lost – will find a place to pawn their life choices and deepest regrets.

Hana Ishikawa wakes on her first morning as the pawnshop's new owner to find it ransacked, the shop’s most precious acquisition stolen and her father missing. And then into the shop stumbles a charming stranger, quite unlike other customers. For he offers help, instead of seeking it.

Together, they must journey through a mystical world to find Hana’s father and the stolen choice – through rain puddles, hitching rides on paper cranes, across the bridge between midnight and morning and through a night market in the clouds.

But as they get closer to the truth, Hana must reveal a secret of her own – and risk making a choice she will never be able to take back.

  • Published: 14 January 2025
  • ISBN: 9780857505347
  • Imprint: Bantam
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $34.99
Categories:

Praise for Water Moon

Full of adventure and marvellous creativity, Water Moon surprises and delights with every turn of the page. I didn't want to leave this fascinating world. Sam Sotto Yambao has written an inventive, refreshing fantasy here

Megan Bannen, bestselling author of THE UNDERTAKING OF HART AND MERCY

Water Moon is unlike anything I've ever read, full of wonders and terrors...a haunting, half-remembered dream of a book

Gareth Brown, Sunday Times bestselling author of THE BOOK OF DOORS

A spellbinding journey into a magical Ghibliesque world where regrets and memories can be bartered, where appearances are not what they seem, and where dreams, free will, and destiny are pitted against fate. Endlessly inventive, this haunting and enchanting tale is not to be missed

A.Y. Chao, author of SHANGHAI IMMORTAL

Water Moon is a dreamy, ethereal fantasy, set in a fascinating faerie tale world with appropriately dark corners. Fans of Hayao Miyazaki will love this one

Olivia Atwater, author of Half a Soul 

What a bright, fresh voice Samantha Sotto Yambao has brought to the literary world. Water Moon is a novel for all the senses, but its true magic lies in being breathtakingly visual. You will be spirited away

Sarah Addison Allen, New York Times bestselling author of Other Birds 

A Studio Ghibliesque tale of whimsy and water in which the protagonists enter a fantasy world to find missing things and also themselves

Sunday Times Style

Water Moon is one of those rare, unique reads that stay with you long after you turn the final page. With its lyrical writing and philosophically poignant themes, Water Moon clings to your soul and renders it transformed

Rania Hanna, author of The Jinn Daughter

Whimsical, poignant, thought-provoking, and wildly adventurous, Samantha Sotto Yambao’s Water Moon will bend your imagination in the very best of ways

Mikki Brammer, author of The Collected Regrets of Clover

For Studio Ghibli fans, Water Moon is going to become your new favorite book

Bookriot

A story about the choices we make, the regrets we have and how to live with them, it’s a bewitching journey meant to mesmerise

Woman & Home

[A] poetic Japanese fantasy novel

Cosmopolitan, 'The best new books out in January'

The prose is clear and descriptive . . . There's an abundance of ideas herein

SFX

A whimsical tale that’s reminiscent of the work of Studio Ghibli

My Weekly

Yambao has created a work of art that is atmospheric and, above all else, wondrous. Although there are stakes, Water Moon is a heartwarming, low-suspense read that reminds us to take hold of our lives and our choices

BookPage

Readers who have been swept up in the cozy charm of Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi and The Dallergut Dream Department Store by Miye Lee will fall hard for the mix of magical realism, fantasy mystery, and star-crossed romance in this novel by Sotto Yambao. Highly recommended

Library Journal

[R]eaders will be utterly drawn in to Yambao's excellent, vivid novel, which is powered by its enchanting setting.... This book is charming, fresh, and difficult to put down

Booklist

Yambao (The Beginning of Always) delights with this gentle portal fantasy about a quaint mystical pawnshop from another realm that poses as a Tokyo ramen restaurant where customers can exchange their regrets for peace of mind . . .Yambao’s inventive setting pushes the limits of common fantasy tropes, and her thought-provoking exploration of regret, choice, and free will resonates. This whimsical tale will have readers riveted

Publishers Weekly

An engaging, dreamy fantasy with an atmosphere reminiscent of a Studio Ghibli production

Guardian

This ethereal novel is mesmerising. Water Moon is pure fantasy, with a fable-like ability to fold the familiar into new shapes like origami. Water Moon gives our world an uncanny and dreamlike underbelly, the creativity of which is an absolute joy to read . . . a wonderful read, with gorgeous prose and a pace that snaps around hairpin twists as the protagonists unravel the mystery behind Hana’s missing father. But the plot – and theme – are eclipsed by the overpoweringly dazzling fantasy of its setting, which evoked more wonder in me than any book has achieved for a long time

BSFA, British Science Fiction Association

A story about the choices we make, the regrets we have and how to live with them, it's a bewitching journey meant to mesmerise

Woman's Weekly
penguin pop image
penguin pop image