Think it’s region dependent though may cover the rest of EU. UK they stop giving you free months or reduced months unless you complain when the offer doesn’t work because it’s a new customer deal rather than a “please come back” deal.
All the cheaper offers for books at £2-£3 are for English only books and none of the JP books seem to ever hit the sales. I can pick up 3 credits for £18 so it’s £6 per book but that’s the cheapest I’ve seen it at in the UK other than the first subscription offer.
Ouch, ok that is quite strict and expensive for Japanese books, although interestingly the extra credits you can get there are cheaper than I can get here (3 for 25€). To be honest, I was surprised the cheap deal worked again because it was framed as a new customer deal but I tried anyway. Perhaps that will break at some point once they get enough people interested in audible here…
Just popping in to say I’ll be back with this series in the new year! Going to spend the rest of Dec. finishing up my in-progress reads as much as possible.
I really enjoyed the rest of Book 5. It’s official, I just can’t get enough of Zenitendo 
I really enjoyed the rest of the book. I liked how from Ch 4 it was basically a continuous story since the MC from Ch 5 also played a major role in Ch 6 and it escalates / the mystery from Ch 4 gets resolved in the epilogue. I liked the redemption of the Erika character in Ch 6. And - aaah, I can’t believe I forgot about the thief (who went to prison). Of course that was the mysterious disgruntled customer from Ch 4, not the beautician 
Very mysterious ending - where are they taking Yodomi… 
haha, I love how the 2nd grader Moemi brings the capsule to the Kouban and the officer is really patronising to her (maybe not the right word, but you know, pretending to take it seriously that the capsule is important when she internally thinks it’s too cheap to matter), and then ends up with the mask stuck to her face, lol. In a way it was a twist that nothing horrible happened out of that! Just the officer becoming so unbearably beautiful she wanted it reversed 
Very relaxing Saturday morning reading.
That was cute that Moemi was so innocent and took the drink and that solved her public speaking problem so well. For kids this is probably a good one, exploring emotions around jealousy and wanting things so bad they think about hurting others to get there. But for adults, although we (hopefully) already learned lessons about those themes, I thought it was still a nice story, and the redemption of Erika was a nice twist, I was expecting things to get out of hand and Beniko to have to step in. I liked that Erika figured it out herself. OMG, and the cute armored cat, when I read the description I was thinking, wait, I’ve seen that before There is a picture of it on the table of contents page.
I just started book 4, which I think will be my last one in the series since it’s the last one my local library has.
I liked the twist in this chapter! It was quite interesting to see Beniko’s rival swoop in and steal her customer. In addition, the contrast between the two magic sweets was interesting: Beniko’s help, but you still have to do some work, whereas her rival’s give you more without work, but have (at least so far) conditions that are near impossible to achieve and that might leave you in despair. Fun!
The Korean audiobooks for this series are pretty well done, so it’s enjoyable to listen to them while reading. The audio also provides nice hints for what certain words might mean depending on the tone. I read a couple of other books between this one and the last one, and this feels a bit easier now, although not by a ton.
My library does have a few other books by this author, which are probably similar in their difficulty levels, so I might try out one of those, even though I checked and they don’t have corresponding audiobooks on Storytel.
Book 4 feels like a nice break point in the series to me in retrospect, it’s nice that your library could get you that far into the series!
yes, this was a surprising (and surprisingly dark) twist! It definitely turns up the dial in consequences.
The Japanese has a lot of mimetic words - does Korean have an equivalent? At least for the Japanese audiobooks, hearing them helped me a lot to understand them, too.
Yes, there are definitely a fair amount of onomatopoeia in Korean. I feel the one I see the most in this series is 빙글빙글 (にこにこ), which is used every chapter when describing Beniko’s smile when she first appears to a customer.
Chapter 2 is done! I had fun reading it.
I liked this story - it was fun to have some continuity between the characters for once! I also liked that Yusuke ended up choosing to protect people with his own power in the end, instead of continuing to become like one of the people who bullied him. I’m interested to see if any of the other stories have continuity in this volume. Also, Beniko’s rival didn’t make an appearance in this story, so I wonder if she’ll show up again.
Book 4 chapter 3 felt very easy to read, which was nice after a long day. I liked Genji and Noriko’s (somewhat questionable) exploration of everyone’s occasional desire to put aside sleep in order to be able to work or chill more. It was also nice to see Beniko’s rival get screwed over, since she’s super creepy.
I liked that one a lot, too. I really like these stories where the sweets overlap and interact. It was such a surprise that the happy ending was due to using the small print on Beniko’s sweet such that both character’s could get the effect from the rival sweet. Nice surprise.
The fourth story was kind of long and difficult, although I admittedly wasn’t making much of an effort to look up unknown words today. However, I liked the ending.
Book 4 Story 5: Ugh, teeth problems. This stressed me out to read, so I’m glad that it was short. Ew.
Book 4 Story 6: I liked this one a lot! It was another one where the sweets interacted, and we even got to see a direct showdown between Yodomi and Beniko. It was interesting to hear Beniko articulate her motivations for running her shop so straightforwardly.
The fourth story was my favourite. It was creative in a really sweet heartwarming way.
Haha, I looked back at my notes for Story 5 and had a similar impression
Story 6 / Epilogue
Yes! I loved the world building and finally hearing Beniko’s motivations, it made me rethink a lot of the interactions in previous stories.
I’m still not getting 100% of things so my understanding may be a bit off at times. Still using this for extensive reading but hoping I’m getting the gist of things as I go.
Chapter 1: don’t actually remember this so will need to re read it as well.
Chapter 2: liked how the sweet balanced things out both for the parents and then with the twins once they were starting to grow up. Kind of heart warming to see two people who want to improve themselves for their partner.
Chapter 3: was not expecting this one to take the turn it did but I suppose it had to backfire at some point
Chapter 4: Got a little confused with this short world building chapter about midway through so will need to re-read it.
Quite liking the way little snippets are added in the middle between chapters as well as at the start and end of the book. Feel it’s tying everything in together.
Chapter 5: quite liked how this reflected on the fact the Dad had found the shop and seen Beniko in his youth and that he didn’t feel right imposing on her magic a 3rd time even when offered it. Wonder if there will be more like this.
Chapter 6: was kind of wondering where this was going considering the title was babysitting bat. Was not expecting that twist with it trying to kidnap the child. I did like the moral though.
I just started a different book for a bit of a challenge, but I’ll be on Book 6 soon. I hope you are enjoying the festive season!
Cool, hope you’re enjoying it. It’ll be a little bit before I get to book 7, made a start on my bingo for 2025.
Thanks, hope you’re enjoying the festive season too 
I started volume 3 today!
And… I’ve had plenty of time to read and not much energy for anything else, so I read the prologue and the first chapter.
Okay, the development of a new kind of shop is so interesting!! And I was so surprised to immediately see it come into play in the very first story with his daughter being cursed by the guy who visited the evil eye shop. When Beniko was like ‘haha what a cute kid, and oh yeah she’s cursed, probably that evil eye shop, you know’ I was flabbergasted.
I’m so curious how far this whole shops thing goes- how many different kinds are there? They seem to know about each other, are they enemies? It seemed like Beniko had sniffed him out, because she came to him vs the other way around.
Also, here’s our mythological being of the day: the Baku
ooh, awesome, maybe if I have time I’ll listen to the audiobook again as you comment on Book 3 
I like the developments of book 3 with the expansion of the world and how it changes the stories.
I thought that was interesting as well - how does Beniko know? And she’s taking such an active role in this case…
Thanks for posting the Baku article, I hadn’t looked into that!
Oh, I’m probably gonna start book 3 soon then 
. I just want to finish 당신을 기다리고 있어 | L31 first but hopefully that’ll be either today or tomorrow.
Join me! 
