夜カフェ 2 Book Club - Chapter 12
The final chapter and second to last week! How will things unfold?
This is an offshoot book club for 夜カフェ which we originally read with the Beginners Book Club. Please follow the links below to guide you to the proper jumping off point if you’re not quite ready for chapter 12, volume 2 yet.
Start date of current chapter: 5th November 2022
Next volume Volume 3, Chapter 1
Previous chapter: Chapter 11
Home thread: 夜カフェ 2 Offshoot Book Club Home Thread
Previous Volume: 夜カフェ 1 Home Thread
Vocabulary List
The vocab list is a community effort, so if you contribute to the list or even just point out a potential error/typo, you’re helping your fellow readers out! It goes without saying, but feel free to peruse the list to help make your reading experience easier! You’re not obligated to contribute but any help you provide is truly appreciated. 
Discussion Guidelines
- Please blur / hide any major events in the current week’s pages (however early they occur), like so:
[spoiler]texthere[/spoiler] result: texthere
- If you’re reading ahead, please refrain from mentioning spoilers in future chapters. If you absolutely must comment something, be sure to add a warning (ex: potential spoiler in chapter 3) before hiding the rest of the spoiler under a spoiler tag.
- When asking for help, please mention the page number and identify whether your book is a physical copy or ebook, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked
- Feel free to jump in at any point in the discussion - you’re never too late to the party!
- Sharing your impressions and predictions of the reading are highly encouraged! It’s fun to see if the story pans out the way some of us think. Just be careful not to give away anything if you’re reading ahead.
Participation Poll
- I’m reading along
- I’ve already read this part
- I’m from the future and reading way later
- I’m behind and will catch up later
2 Likes
Here’s おもちゃのチャチャチャif anybody would like to hear it!
Story Comments
I’m glad we ended this volume on a happy note, but I’m quite disappointed that none of the big issues of the volume really got resolved.
Nothing came of Yayako locking Hanabi in a toilet cubicle and dousing her with water, or damaging her shoes.
There was no real resolution to Risa and Nacchan’s storyline either - nobody even even spoke to Nacchan about it, despite the fact that she was being pretty unkind to Risa about being out of time with the castanets and that would have been a good opportunity to bring it up…
Yamato sure got a lot of mentions for somebody whose only input to the story line was sending one kind of vague LINE message - was anybody else expecting him to make a surprise appearance at the 夜かフェス?
Overall, I enjoyed this volume. My frustrations with it all come from being 33 years old and therefore clearly not the intended audience, rather than being faults with the story itself. 12 year old me would have been SO invested in this storyline. 
As it is though, the fact that reading a chapter routinely takes me 1.5 - 2 hours makes me think that for now its time for me to leave this series for a while as it’s too big of a time investment for me at the moment. I’d like to come back and read more once my reading speed increases though, so I hope you guys keep filling in the vocab lists!
Huge thanks to @Hantsuki for all of your hard work organizing the club, and to everyone else for reading along and sharing their thoughts. It’s been fun reading with you all!
5 Likes
Story comments on last chapter
I’m honestly very disappointed in the last chapter. It seems forced into an entirely jolly tone when the issues for Hanabi and Risa are completely up in the air. Like Nacchan seems to be given a free pass as I feared. All to end the book on a positive note that rings so false for me.
If there had been a true confrontation about the Nacchan and Risa situation with Nacchan, then I could have enjoyed the positive end note, but not as it is.
I really recommend reading the atogaki, it gives some info about the author’s life that is relevant to the story.
Atogaki comments
I don’t get why the author seems happy to have bully and victim be forced to play together and act like they get along. Would the author have thought that a nice thing when they were that age? It seems they were bullied similar to Hanabi, maybe not as severely. (Hard to say since the atogaki only mentions being ignored.)
I would have thought someone who had been bullied wouldn’t write a story where forcing a victim to get along with their bully was considered a good idea. But apparently not…
Kinda made me like this second volume even less.
4 Likes
Feel free to continue the あとがき and Hanabi’s recipe discussion in this thread.
2 Likes
It’s been over two weeks later, and I finally finished this book. I agree that the ending wasn’t satisfying, but I would be hard pressed to say I found anything in this book satisfying. I guess maybe the few times Hanabi stepped up and retaliated instead of passively accepting the punches.
I think many of us agree that this volume was inferior to the first so let’s discuss what makes you feel that way.
Summary
Personally, I think Yamato was one of the more interesting characters, and to pretty much cut him from this volume was a disservice.
He and even Aunt Aiko didn’t have much of a part this time around. I enjoyed hearing her advice and her wisdom so that time she had to offer advice after Hanabi and Tina’s fight was the only enjoyable part of that conflict for me.
Ryoma wasn’t a particularly exciting new character, and I always found it hard to like Tina. I’m glad we got to learn more about Risa, but she had an unsatisfying conclusion.
I think overall the pacing wasn’t all great this time around. A lot of the issues feel unresolved, and while that’s kind of necessary as the series continues for several books, the temporary resolutions feel forced.
The third volume looks a little promising, and I hope that’s because the author wrote in response to some fan mail she received. Otherwise, it’s a bit disappointing how different the first and second volumes feel.
1 Like
