A Midnight Pastry Shop Called Hwawoldang – Book Review

For readers of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, The Dallergut Dream Department Store, and The Midnight Library, a sweetly magical and uplifting novel about a young woman who inherits an enchanted bakery that spirits visit on their last stop before the afterlife.

Twenty-seven-year-old Yeon-hwa has inherited a neighborhood bakery from her grandmother. Curiously, her grandmother’s will spells out two conditions: Yeon-hwa must keep the shop going for at least another month and only open it to customers from 10 PM until midnight. Yeon-hwa is hesitant at first; her grandmother was always distant, raising Yeon-hwa after her parents died in a car accident. But she agrees to the terms, hoping that running the bakery will help her to finally understand her grandmother after all these years.

Yeon-hwa soon learns that the Hwawoldang—the name means “flower moon temple” —is not an ordinary dessert shop. The customers who arrive late at night are spirits, there to attend to unfinished business before being reincarnated. The sweets they crave hold some deep significance in their earthly lives, and they expect Yeon-hwa to meet their requests, as her grandmother did.

With each customer who arrives, Yeon-hwa learns which special desserts live in their memories and will help them on their way. Aided by the shop’s resident black cat, Yeon-hwa learns how to find closure for her customers—and begins to unravel her own family’s secrets as well.

Yeon-Hwa inherits the pastry shop from her grandmother after her death. The shop has unique opening time–it opens at 10 pm and closes around midnight. Yeon-Hwa meets customers who had died and who comes to the store asking for a special sweet that reminds them of their loved ones. Yeon-Hwa then immediately transports to the time when these customers were alive and how they lived before their death.

Basically, all stories in the book dealt with the customers, their lives before their death and their loved ones to whom they dedicate those sweets too. Many comment that this book is similar to Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookstore, a Japanese fiction book which I still yet to read. To me, I felt this was a unique story and each of these customer’s lives before their death was interesting as well as heartbreaking, emotional as well. The fact that their loved one is deeply sad about the loss also makes it heartbreaking.

It was interesting and a good magic realism book. Overall, I rate this book as four stars.