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(3.68/5)Enjoyable and approchable Murder Mystery
In terms of content, this is a straight forward "isolated hut" murder mystery. The plot is not ground breaking, but the execution makes for an easy and enjoyable read - especially from a language learning perspective.
The only difficult aspects with this book are the large number of characters - there are more than a dozen names to keep track of - and the occasional scene switch within a chapter.
Other than that the language is mostly easy with common vocabulary and reasonable sentence length.
Summer camp of death
What a fun, breezy book. あなたも follows a group of (mostly) young people who sign up for a summer program to learn from a professional mangaka. They get more than they bargained for, however, when a serial killer gets loose from his police escort and finds his way to their lodge.
True to the author's reputation, the action is fast and the language is basic (for a novel), leading to this being a good beginner novel. There's almost no specialized vocabulary, and there are plenty of scenes that are almost entirely dialogue. One minus is a rather large cast of characters, so I recommend taking notes if you're reading the book slowly.
Overall a good murder mystery (?) beach read, good for when you need to turn your brain off for pure entertainment.
Funny, but that's about it. The main plot twist is revealed in the middle of the book and the rest is a suspenseful watching it play out. I'm a fan of premises where the setting is cut off from everything else and killing starts, but I didn't find it particularly gripping.
The prose is very simple, with no descriptions and an emphasis on dialogue. It's also a pretty short light novel.
Great first novel
I read it as my first novel, I would have put myself at N4/N3 when I started and at N3/N2 by the time I finished. I read it with the help of Yomichan too. That said, I think it was a great first novel because the chapters are short and there is action all the time, not a lot of lengthily poetical descriptions. The tone is very humorous, very interesting to discover this author.
A non-spoiler list of characters for easy reference while reading, by yours truly.
The Seminar Staff
The Seminar Participants
Other Characters
— Review
A really low-effort slasher type of story. The plot is non-existant, the characters are outrageously stupid, there is very little suspense. Its only redeeming qualities are that it’s a very fast read and the author is very aware of what he is producing here. It’s vaguely amusing at times if you can get past the rampant sexism (on both sides).
I’d say this is a good book for two kind of language learners: if you are used to spoken Japanese and want to try a first novel (this is mostly dialogues and there’s very little polite speech), or if you are more the bookworm type and want to be exposed to some rougher, non ですます type of Japanese spoken patterns.