I'd recommend it for any fans of Japanese fiction or anyone who wants a coming of age story with a difference. Catfish Rolling is one of those novels where the reader has to do the legwork and interpret its meaning. I loved how Sora's relationships (with her father, her missing mother, and her guy friend) are messy and complicated.

After Sora's father goes missing, she has no choice but to venture into uncharted spaces within the time zones to find him, her mother and perhaps even the catfish itself. The honour of my first 5-star of the new year goes to Clara Kumagai’s phenomenal debut, that blends magical realism and sci-fi elements into a haunting tale of grief, family, time and the earthquake that shook a nation. There are themes of grief (and all its stages), growth (as both a young person experiencing trauma and grief), and living in liminal spaces where time moves faster, slower, or normally. When an intuitive librarian lends Jamie a disguised book that reflects his own emerging feelings towards boys, a romance is sparked by scribbled notes in the book’s margins. Emotions and loss transcend time, and this young girl only sees both as being beyond anyone's control.So, get ready for a deep dive into emotions, loss, and hope because this read dances around that heart the whole way through. Both subtle and horribly raw, Sora shines a light on grief and loss, and what it means to have (or not have) enough time.

Instead, I found an incredible, emotive, YA novel that explored parental loss, identity, belonging, isolation, ecology, the fracturing of time, and a complicated parental relationship dealing with memory loss and acting as a carer. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a free eARC in exchange for an honest review! Slowing it down, speeding it up, making entire chunks of it go missing, or trapping characters to get lost in times gone by. I was drawn toward Catfish Rolling due to the amazing cover (the UK variant I find slightly better), and took a dive on a story about a young woman dealing with the long term aftermath of an earthquake so enormous that it broke time itself (which happens in the prologue).This is a story about coping with grief, handling loneliness, preserving memories, appreciating time, focusing on present moments and people we still have, as well as respecting and understanding the earth and its ecosystem. Catfish Rolling is a heart-aching and deeply thought-provoking coming of age novel from a talented new voice. I want so much more information about why Sora is so unique - travelling between zones without much effect, keeping track of time so precisely, feeling zones and being able to judge their time, not to mention the electric shocks and fast-growing trees.