Against my better judgment, I borrowed
'A Midnight Pastry Shop Called Hwawoldang' (January 2026) by Lee Onhwa, translated from Korean by Slin Jung. I understand that this author's name is a pseudonym. It's a pen name belonging to suspense and sci-fi writer
Cheong Ye, and she has been notable in the recent years at major literary awards.
I'm rarely into these books, but I'm in anxiety mode (because of the dog's IBD+SIBO+stress colitis issues), and I've just cleared a heavy workload with heavy topics, so I didn't mind this 'here we go again, this feel-good tearjerker genre'.
Protagonist twenty-seven-year-old Yeon-hwa inherits her grandmother's bakery Hwawoldang. She is in her late twenties, and strapped for cash too. She doesn't know anything about this bakery either. This bakery was in debt of a hundred million won and supposed to eventually close, but in accordance to her grandmother's strict wishes, Yeon-hwa kept it open for one last month. One odd staff, Sa-wol remains present to help. He’s a shaman by trade and absolutely mysterious about what he does at the shop. We only see him delivering specially-treated common baking ingredients infused with spiritual power.
Hwawoldang opens from 10pm to midnight to serve spirits. Traditional sweets are served to deceased spirits help them resolve regrets in order to move on and be reincarnated. These spirits are all different, and they need different solutions to move on. This can only be done if Yeon-hwa is able to prepare a specific traditional Korean sweet or snack. She can only do this if she understands each soul’s story. And oddly she seems to be able to bake everything they ask for.
Six chapters and an epilogue. Every chapter is a story, and each story corresponds to a type of Korean sweet or pastry. There are five spirit customers served and she made five sweets. There were chocolate jeonbyeon crackers, plum blossom manju buns, green tea dango, strawberry chapssal-tteok and chestnut yanggaeng.
Obviously I'm not into Korean sweets. I don't know anything about them either. So if there are any deeper meaning about the choice of sweets, it’s lost on me. There is also a black cat who hangs around the shop, of course. There’s always a cat. This one even delivers orders. It’s a very special black cat, and we get to know why and how in ‘Chapter 6: Sa-wol’s Story, and the Chestnut Yanggaeng of Goodbye’.
Importantly, this type of books remind readers to try to live without regrets, so that we die in peace. In ‘Chapter 5: The Fourth Customer and the Strawberry Chapssal-tteok’, it ended with these words, and foreshadowing how Yeon-hwa would resolve her issues with her deceased grandmother and find strength to move on too.
Then she was wailing, held tight in the arms of two strangers. Each tear was filled with guilt, sorrow, and an indelible wistfulness. Her emotions were piled together like the layers of a well-baked pastry, but the only word we had for those complicated feelings was love. That was what she wanted to express to her new little brother; and now she would never get that chance.
The dead had granted their forgiveness, and the living were left to long for the lost. What more vould anyone do but to move past the regrets?
At the end, the final request of red chestnut yanggaeng was for Yeon-hwa’s grandmother. She finally understood her grandmother’s regrets, who Sa-wol is and how they are intertwined with her parents death. In the end, there is no blame or resentment, only acceptance and moving on. The spirit customers trickled off because the magic in the shop is gone. Yeon-hwa doesn’t quite possess spiritual powers.
In the epilogue, Yeon-hwa kept the store open, but in the day, making the chestnut yanggaeng a hit on Instagram, and bringing in paying customers who are alive. She also made enough to pay Sa-wol a salary. She was finally happy to be doing this, and feeling like a real adult, motivated to “make Hwawoldang the biggest name in traditional sweets.”
This feel-good genre does zilch to relieve my anxiety. It offers little comfort. I do get to have read about the experiences of each family or human in each chapter. Right now, I'm not in empathy mode, so I can't empathize and I don't find these stories touching. It's fiction, yet it isn't exactly fiction in the sense that these stories are real to someone else in the world.
