#TheFridayBookshop #NetGalley
251 pages
Pub date: 05 November 2026
From the publisher:
If you’re reading this, the perfect book has found you.
This fall, THE FRIDAY BOOKSHOP (Berkley Hardcover; on sale November 3, 2026), a delightful work of Japanese healing fiction by Sawako Natori, translated by Yui Kajita, is sure to lift your spirits and offer up all the joy, wisdom, and heartwarming charm you never knew you needed inside its pages.
Devoted readers know that bookshops are sacred spaces that deal in treasure, and that booksellers themselves are essentially magicians, conjuring the stories we desire when we most need them. In THE FRIDAY BOOKSHOP, Natori celebrates all that we gain from bookstores in a tale that will warm your heart and have you ready to make a trip to your own local shop!
Step into the Friday Bookshop, nestled inside a rustic train station outside of Tokyo, where the perfect book finds you the moment you need it.
Fumiya is a college student who stumbles into The Friday Bookshop, a tiny store rumored for its peculiar charm, in search of a rare book for his ailing father. There, he not only finds the very book he seeks, but also a café where the food menu changes daily on the chef’s whim, a vast underground vault lined with bookshelves, lovingly converted from an old, abandoned subway platform, and a cast of zany shop owners who take him under their wing.
The Friday Bookshop quickly becomes Fumiya’s favorite place—so much so that he begins to work there part-time. Through colorful interactions with the booksellers and their visitors, as well as mouthwatering dishes inspired by the books they recommend, it’s impossible for him not to fall in love with the seemingly ordinary yet enchanting little bookstore.
And best of all, at the Friday Bookshop, Fumiya learns to embrace the joy of reading, and that books can be a means to connect with other people and navigate the twists and turns of life.
With its charming Japanese setting, real book recommendations, mouthwatering dishes, and a cast of quirky shop owners and visitors, readers of Before the Coffee Gets Cold and Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop will fall in love with THE FRIDAY BOOKSHOP. Natori delivers another uplifting installment in the growing healing fiction genre, exploring how books bring us comfort in hard times.
About the author and translator:
Born in 1973 in Hyogo Prefecture, Sawako Natori is a novelist and a freelance scenarist for games and audio dramas. She won the Train Station Booksellers Award for The Lost and Found Corner at Penguin Railway in 2015. Her other novels include Noah’s Ark in the Library, Books Awaiting at the Literary Inn, and The Galaxy Library.
Yui Kajita is a literary translator and illustrator, originally from the countryside of Japan. Her translations include Run with the Wind by Shion Miura, The Samurai Detectives by Shotaro Ikenami, and The Friday Bookshop by Sawako Natori. She has a PhD in English literature from the University of Cambridge.
Library Journal calls The Friday Bookshop a charming, slow‑paced, book‑loving tale set in a quirky Japanese train‑station bookstore, but not an essential title in a crowded healing‑fiction field
My thoughts:
I am a fan of the Asian novels that feature foods and books. They are generally leisurely comfort reads for me and that is certainly the case here. Anyone who already knows this genre is in for a treat. This will also be the case for new readers.
Many thanks to Berkley for the opportunity to be part of this spotlight tour. Thanks as well to NetGalley.
All thoughts are my own.
