This is a novel I bought new at the Seattle Kinokuniya just because I was on a trip and so in a mood to spend money (even though otherwise I’m trying to get rid of physical backlog, not add to it…). I’d never heard of it before, it was just an interesting cover next to other interesting covers, and in particular the obi copy of 青春XホラーXサスペンス sounded like a readable blend to me and so I ended up buying it. And I suppose in that context, it ended up about as well as could be expected, since I actually did read and finish it, not that long after I bought it, and it was pretty good. So hey! Coulda been worse. Looking back on it in retrospect, was it an unmissable experience that was definitely the best use of my time vs. reading other things, and should I have bought it for the really quite (understandably) marked-up American Kinokuniya price of $31.99? I mean… no. But hey, it is good to sprinkle in what I call “true breadth” works that you come by essentially at random just off the shelf now and then, I think. It’s basically a story about a mysterious new religious movement setting up a facility in a small town in Kyushu, and about the main protagonist, a high school girl, losing contact with a friend she had a falling out with because the latter has ended up embroiled in that facility, and then mysterious deaths start happening… I think it’s suspenseful enough. It reads pretty briskly, I got what was going on, and I was endeared to the characters pretty well. And there was never any real danger of my stopping reading and calling it quits early once I got going (which itself is perhaps a feat considering the low connection I had to the book going in, and how much I’m trying to downsize). But I do kinda wish that it were just a little bit… more. In some kind of direction. Like I would personally like it to feel a little bit more literary than it does. As it is, it’s in a little bit of an awkward balance where it’s really quite straightforward, and not really that intense, and I’m not sure exactly if it’s just because it’s meant to be marketed to teens and I didn’t pick up on that (the presentation of the dress at least feels to me more like – relatively light suspense novel for mainly but not exclusively adults – which to be fair does feel largely accurate I guess). But I think if it’s meant mainly as a horror/suspense contemporary novel I want it to be going for it more in the prose and dynamics. And if it’s meant to be mainly a teen adventure, I want it to be pulpier (like I recently loved the second volume of Hobtown, which involves a teen mystery that’s way messier and out there and pulpier and more effective for it). So either way I guess I just would like it to be less straightforward and plain. It feels like as it is everything works OK – the characters work OK, the themes of friendship work OK, the mystery works OK,
But it’s tough for me to say that any of all that works GREAT for me, I think, which is a little too bad. But hey, again – I feel like that’s still a pretty great outcome for the specific situation I came to the book in. Maybe not a homerun, but probably like… a double? One weird element about the book that I don’t fully understand, is it appears that a book within the book is… actually a real book, a separate one by another author called 楽園の楽園. I don’t know why this is – I don’t think that they’re like, connected worlds? (The conceit in this book is that the leader of the sinister new religious movement wrote that book and they treat it as their bible). Is it corporate synergy? Did that book speak to this author so much she incorporated it into her work? I have no idea. I only realized this at the end of the book when there was a little legal acknowledgement about that book’s existence, like you would see if a song was quoted extensively or whatever. Weird! Honestly feels like it takes away slightly, and maybe explains in retrospect why the religious movement’s mythology wasn’t actually explored that much more in this book. But maybe if I understood why it was being used that way more it would be interesting.