キッチン

Beautiful

This was a lovely book. It's heavy, with central themes of grief and loss, but I liked that while the sadness, loneliness, and desolation that comes along with losing someone you love is intertwined with the stories, they both ended on somewhat hopeful notes that pointed towards some sort of healing for the characters.

Japanese-wise, I found キッチン and キッチン２ more difficult than Moonlight Shadow, since the latter was a bit more straightforward and retrospective, whereas Mikage is a more introspective character. In general, Yoshimoto's writing is gorgeous and trends towards literary fiction imo, despite its initial simplicity, so there are a lot of descriptive words regarding nature and people's feelings that you might not encounter in the average light novel. That said, it's a delight to read and I would definitely recommend it!