Specs
Reviews
(3.67/5)Cute and Endearing Story with Cats
Very cute, endearing story featuring a guy who moves to Enoshima and becomes able to talk to cats. It was fun to read a story set in Kanagawa!
This isn't super difficult, but it's useful for N1/N2 grammar points and common literary expressions.
EDIT: Coming back to knock a star off. I’ve owned vol2 for ages and still haven’t read it. I never think back to this book like I do my other 5 star reads.
Protag quits his job after ~something~ happened and moves into his dead grandparents’ house in Enoshima, where he one day realises he can now understand cat speech. It’s basically structured into solving little cat related mysteries and problems. Each cat featured has their own unique speech style and distinct personality which is super fun. Just a very very endearing book, I was sure I’d give it 5 stars by the time I was like 20% through and I bought the sequel before I’d even finished reading this one. Just an absolute delight of a book if you’re a fan of chill books where not a ton of stuff happens, although this one has more stuff going on than most of the other books I read in that genre.
- No furigana for names, very little furigana in general
- The main cat speaks and occasionally narrates in the style of writing from 吾輩は猫である so if you’re unfamiliar it might be a bit of a surprise. You should probably read that first if you haven’t already before jumping into this!
- It’s published under a light novel brand but I wouldn’t consider this a light novel at all. It feels more mature, the protagonist isn’t a teenager, there’s no illustrations (a shame because the cover art style is lovely), etc.
Okayish story
Its a little story with some little adventures with a guy who moved to 江の島 and can suddenly speak to cats. Its not that deep, and the adventures are also okayish "fun". There is an overarching story which gets developed through the book, and that story is the most interesting part of the book. But the book in and of itself was quite the drag for me, I could'nt get myself motivated to read this book because it was quite boring for me. However, it has a ton of vocab, especially - surprise - cat vocab. Which means you'll get words which describe a graceful cat and so on.
Overall, I would this book only if you are really bored and need something to read. Which I was, lol.