WATER MOON

For readers of Erin Morgenstern and Studio Ghibli fans, WATER MOON by Samantha Sotto Yambao is a darkly beautiful speculative mystery that explores a hidden Japan where choice is forbidden and fate is a map tattooed on your skin.

Inside a small, nameless pawnshop in Tokyo, hidden behind a ramen restaurant's door, regrets are traded for peace of mind and exquisite green tea and discarded dreams fetch a very good price. Only those who are lost find it. On Hana Ishikawa's first morning as its new owner, she wakes up to find her father Toshio missing, the pawnshop ransacked, and the shop's most precious acquisition stolen. Worse, the Shiikuin, beings that come to collect the pawnshop acquisitions are due, and she knows the terrible price of losing any of the vault's contents all too well. As Hana considers the clues her father has left behind, she begins to suspect that Toshio's disappearance has something to do with her dead mother. At a crossroads, her choice is made by a young physicist named Keishin Minatozaki, a most unusual client that appears at her door, offering help instead of seeking it. Together, they sink into a mystical world, searching for Toshio in the clues he's left. They travel through rain puddles, hitch rides on paper cranes and rumors, and dash through a night market in the clouds, all while trying to outrun the Shiikuin. But as they get closer to finding a heartbreaking truth, Hana must make a cruel, secret trade of her own. Samantha Sotto Yambao is a professional daydreamer, aspiring time traveler, and speculative fiction writer based in Manila. She is the author of Before Ever After, Love and Gravity, A Dream of Trees, and the Beginning of Always.