Mooncakes

This is absolutely adorable! The storyline is fantastic, fun, and achingly sweet. The diversity representation is off the charts incredibly with a non-binary main character, multiple BIPOC characters, and some kick-ass disability representation. One of my favorite parts of the story is how thoughtfully the disability representation overlaps with the fantasy elements of the story. The art style is fantastic and the mix of little details in the panels adds so much depth to the story. One of the details that I adore was how Tam’s stripe of colored hair is a perfect color match for Nova’s hearing aids. The color match is a super cute way to pretty subtly reinforce the near cosmic connection of their friendship turned to romance. My only tiny complaints are that I wanted more depth to some elements of the story. Given the name, I would have loved to see a scene where the characters actually cook and/or eat mooncakes. They get mentioned briefly once, but as is they seem like a pretty extraneous detail to have named the entire book after. Even just a cute post-epilogue scene of them cooking and/or eating the cakes would have been delightful. My other tiny complaint is that a huge portion of this book is about how Tam needs to harness their wolf magic, and they don’t know how to. But the book also never actually tells us how Tam figured out what they were doing or how they eventually managed to use their magic. I desperately wish some explanation for that had been provided.

First off the art is beautiful, I adore the woodland creatures! And I love uniqueness of the character designs, it really represents the quirks and personalities of everyone well. Also Nova's grandmas cool, I wish I had a bookshop like theirs near me. Speaking of which, all the characters seemed well rounded, except I wish the neighbor lady got a little bit more page time so we could get to know her a tad better, not that the outcome would've changed, I just like getting to know all the players. And I know I can't say much but… oh that twist! And the other twist! Some things were a little bit predictable but majority wise Mooncakes kept me on my toes and I love it for it! I highly recommend this for anyone looking for a cute (did I mention the art is adorable,) Sapphic, witchy, werewolf-y, fun fall read. Or anyone in general really. It's so good. I greatly hope that one day there will be a volume two to grace this earth.

This book is so good! It has awesome queer representation! Would highly recommend reading it.