Oh man, this book was a rollercoaster. The whole time I was reading it, I was completely on edge, everyone appears to be a suspect, everyone does something questionable and everyone seems to be hiding something, except you won't know who's hiding what or who has done what, you'll truly have to read until the final sentence of the book to wrap up the story and wallow in disappointment. I mean, at least I did.
The book is a really good book, well written with really eloquent language and quite a capturing language, you definitely remember a few sentences said because they kind of burn their way into your head. I really loved the setting, the book is set in Japan and it was a nice change from a western country and the descriptions really left an image of were every event takes place, so overall the book was quite satisfying and interesting. However!!
The book is about this woman named Yasuko and her Daughter Misato and their neighbour Tetsuya Ishigami, only referred to as Ishigami.
Ishigami has a crush on Yasuko and buys lunch from her work in a small café everyday.
One day Yasukos ex-husband comes to visit, demanding money from her and in a heated physical argument, Yasuko and Misato kill him. Upon hearing the commotion next door, Ishigami also known as an incredible math genius that spends his whole day solving math problems top professors can't solve, decides to help them get rid of the body by staging the murder elsewhere and throwing off any evidence pointing at Yasuko and Misato.
The rest of the book explains the whole plan, the police investigation and the nosey former rival of Ishigami, Dr. Yukanawa, a physicist that is just as smart, if not smarter than Ishigami.
I don't quite know how to judge this book without writing out the spoilers but I'm going to say that the ending took a turn I didn't expect and it disappointed me. Somewhere along the middle of the book this intense excitement and mystery starts taking place and you feel like basically everything is possible at this point, however when the ending came, while being a really good ending, I felt like something was missing and that it could have easily taken a more crime/horror/mystery turn, instead it was more a rip-your-heart-out moment. There were just things that you thought "well if he did this from the start it wouldn't lead to this" and that left me pretty frustrated and unsatisfied with the ending which was even more heartbreaking considering how intense and good I found the book, it took med about two days to finish it despite it being 400 pages but it does leave you wanting more. Maybe I am just one of those people that expect a perfect ending and this wasn't it for me, or maybe the book was leading into so many darker things that I felt could be a path to take but the author just kind of brushed them off.
Other than the disappointments, I did actually really like the book and the characters. I absolutely adore that it was set in Asia or Japan more specifically, it created another image in my head than I usually have when the books are set in western countries and it was nice to experience, while mild, the Japanese culture for a while.
Would I recommend this book? Absolutely, it's a good time-passer and it's interesting despite what I think was flawed. Could I write a better story myself? Probably not, which is why I'm not going to judge it too hard, it's good writing despite all.
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