I Love You So Mochi by Sarah Kuhn
Rating: 
If you read my blog often, you will know that Romance is something I don’t read a lot, nor Contemporary, and yet here we are with a 4 fox review for I Love You So Mochi, what happened?
For starters, the premise of love you so mochi sounded cute. It is a meet cute of someone trying to find the best self she can be and someone who is in a mochi costume trying to help his family succeed and sell enough mochi.
Kimiko is a promising artist just like her mother, she has the way into a fancy art school just like she dreamed with her mother. But the catch is she hasn’t painted anything for a long time, no masterpieces, nothing. Sitting in front of the canvas brings nothing. Instead she is distracted creating Kimi Originals, clothing that brings the best version of yourself while you wear it (I felt like I needed Kimiko to create me some clothes). As expected, her mum finds out she is not actually painting and isntead is wasting her time with clothes. So Kimi accepts in a kinda of whim, an invitation from her estranged maternal grandparents.
Kyoto here we come. The plan is to find what Kimi’s Kimi Ultimate is. But instead she gets lost and finds Akira, who is passionate about medicine and studying and seems to have his whole life neatly planned, almost the complete opposite to Kimi. And on top of that, Kyoto is both familiar and completely strange for Kimi who has never been to Japan before but has been brougth up by Japanese parents in the US.
Overall, I found the book a good measure of cute, tiny bit of cringe moments (I don’t like too much of those, and there were barely any in this), and just a lot of looking inside yourself, finding what you want, instead of being who you think others want you to be.
As I read it, I partly understood what Kimi felt, that she had to be the Kimi other perceived and expected, because her whole identity was in that, and if you strip that away, who are you?
The romance was sweet and it developed in a fun way, considering it has to be a quick one, but it also wasn’t too loved up so that you lose the rest of the plot. And it had a lot of funny laugh out loud kind of moments to cheer you up. Probably the best kind of romance that I have read in a while, with a lot of feel good.