ふしぎ駄菓子屋 銭天堂 1

Although I'd still say this book is a good choice for those new to prose, there are still difficult portions of the book. For reference, I found the grammar to be a bit more complex than something like 夜カフェ, but the language isn't as flowery as something like 魔女の宅急便. In fact, the descriptions are rather matter-of-fact, which made it easy to parse.

The reoccurring character 紅子 (the lady on the cover) speaks in a way that was difficult to understand due to keigo and some unfamiliar speech patterns — unsure if this is a dialect, a certain speaking style/register, or if this is unique to 紅子. This is where most of the difficulty came from. Even then, by the end you get used to her way of speaking.

The stories are quite formulaic, but they still went in completely unexpected directions. All of the candies and their effects were so creative! The formulaic aspect makes it easy to break up chapters if you need to. It was fun that 紅子 kept appearing outside of the store too, every time that happened I was like, wait, she doesn't just stay in the shop 24/7? idk, imagining this lady doing errands cracks me up for some reason.