夜カフェ(1) / Book
Summary
Kurosawa Hanabi wants to restart a new life in middle school. However, she failed all her middle school entrance exams and so she’s once again stuck at another local public school. And so her life continues the same way as before: With the same relationships, not attending any clubs and fighting with her parents. Argh, this every day life sucks! So she runs away from home and helps her aunt run a small café. There she gets to know a strange boy… And thus a story begins about friendship and love and a girl who tries to find a place where she belongs.
(Summary is a very rough summary/kind of translation of the amazon jp summary… I’m sorry, I botched this Q_Q It really didn’t sound that bad to me, but kinda cute. If someone else provides a summary I can edit it in)
From the amazon comments and description to me it sounds like the story of a middle schooler who tries to find her place and explore what is special in her sometimes not so special every day life.
Availability
digital:
Kindle/Amazon JP
Kobo
BookWalker
Personal Opinion
I was looking for easy to get started books and stumbled upon this. It seems to be one of the more popular series of Aotori Bunko (->publisher aiming at late elementary to middle schoolers) (newest volume (11) is currently listed as their #2 on Amazon), the reviews seem fairly good and most adults seem to describe it as a heart warming story as well. And language wise it’s listed as one of the easiest books at learnnatively. I personally also like that there are more books in the series, should I get hooked (more reading material!). It seems to be based in the normal world, so I don’t expect any wild vocabulary that we sometimes find in other books (e.g. in books with a magic setting).
I read another book from the publisher before and they generally use kanji but add furigana. I find that this is easier to parse than a lot of non-kanji books (no hiragana-hell!).
I’m currently considering getting this even if no one else wants it 
Pros and Cons
Pros
- It’s a book! Lots of reading!
- Kanji generally used but with Furigana (beginner-friendly)
- Book seems self-contained but part of a series (good offshoot club candidate?)
- The book is already added at koohi.cafe (former floflo) if anybody uses that for vocab learning
- Normal world / no fantasy setting (=> less specialized vocabulary)
Cons
- It’s a book! (too much text might be intimidating for some compared to manga)
- It’s school based, so not a super adult story
Pictures
First Three Pages of Chapter One
(sample from BookWalker, it might be easier to read in their actual reader)
Difficulty Poll
How much effort would you need to read this book?
- 1 - No effort at all
- 2 - Minimal effort
- 3 - Moderate effort
- 4 - Substantial effort
- 5 - So much effort my head might explode
- I don’t know
0 voters