Riri

3.5⭐

A comfortable and cozy read, with very light mystery elements to it. The Kamogawa Detective Agency specializes in finding and re-creating a customized dish people have had once in their lives, drawing out all the nostalgic memories linked to the food. Each chapter features a different customer and their requested dish, with plenty of focus on not just the food but also the Japanese tableware they're served on. The overall pace is rather relaxed and formulaic, with each chapter following the exact same progression pattern.

The most glaring issue with this book is that it offers little to no description of the food served. It just throws a lot of names of regional ingredients and cooking styles, and then never explain any of those so you have to look them up yourself if you don't know. It also casually drops location names in Kyoto all the time and not describe what the place is like, so if you've never been to Kyoto and tasted the food there, good luck trying to picture these things in your mind. Might be more enjoyable to read this while Googling the images though, for better visualization. If you are knowledgeable in this topic, however, the dishes served in this book really do whet the appetite.

All in all, this has the exact same problem as Before the Coffee Gets Cold for me. The chapters are too short for me to care about any of the characters aside from Nagare and Koishi, who we don't really learn much about since the chapters are mostly about the customers. It can be quite emotional though, just a little bit lacking for me personally.

This book doesn't grab me right off the bat. It takes a while before I can truly get into the story and magic, but the fast pace and the clear, concise writing style made it engaging nonetheless. Ceony is a nice and relatable heroine. She has her flaws, of course, but she acknowledges them and tries to be a better person. She doesn't dwell on things she can't do anything about, and instead tries to make the best of her life—even if it's different from what she wanted.

The romance is thin, but adorable. Emery's past gives so much depth to his character, and Ceony only starts to fall in love after she learns more about him. No instalove, no drooling over his hotness considering he's pretty much average in everything aside from his eyes. The 12 year of age difference doesn't bother me a single bit, but that's my personal taste... and also because Emery doesn't feel like an old man despite his age.

And because I'm closer to his age than Ceony's. You didn't see that.

That aside, it'd have been nice if we get to learn about Ceony herself. Emery's life and past takes up a large portion of the story, but Ceony's only came out in a desperate moment that made it feel kind of rushed. This is only the first book in a trilogy though, maybe that's for the next ones to reveal. I didn't really like Lira though. I feel like she lacks depth as an antagonist, so hopefully this part gets better as the story moves along.