白夜行

I was blown away, no page felt like a waste.

My impressions: I LOVED IT. Every second of it, it was a long read, took me 48 days in total, not having much time. And every time I opened the book I was glad to do so. The jumps in place and character were really well placed, I wanted to know more, but was always satisfied with what I learned in the previous section, so it wasn't frustrating. I was always excited to learn where the story would bring me, and the sort of convoluted character relationships didn't hinder my enjoyment at all. This book respects your time and attention, it won't force feed you twists and turns at every turn, but more and more drops of information that grip you even further. Its length feels like a feature, following the characters for a long time really strengthens the emotional grip if done well. And here, in my opinion, it is. I won't say anything more, I don't want to spoil.

Difficulty: the difficulty rating feels apt. Like anything, it may be helpful to have read books with a similar theme before, in order for the amount of new vocab to be a bit more manageable. Still, no big deal if you can tackle it and I highly recommend it if the blurb piques your interest. The phrasing was very straightforward and descriptive, mostly talking about things in a practical, easy to understand way.

Really good book, best one I've read so far in the mystery genre. Very well worth the read, hard parts due to vocabulary and some colloquial/kansai ben, but otherwise pretty simple grammar.

Note: I recommend keeping a list of characters with the general gist of who they are, as the story progresses. Because, there's toooooo many characters and time skips, so it's hard to track, especially if you suck at kanji names like I do.