Specs
Reviews
(3.88/5)A mixed bag
This book is an intriguing genre mix with mystery elements, psychological drama and criticism of the Japanese job hunting system. It had a lot of good ideas, but also some flaws that seriously dampened my enjoyment. Some parts felt too repetitive, and the plot twist were often overexplained and still managed to feel overly convenient. It also comes across as a bit moralizing in the end.
Still, every time I got too frustrated about these flaws, the book swung around and gave me something I liked, mostly small moments where one of the characters felt really relatable, and the overall sense that this is a story that’ll keep you guessing and you can never let your guard down because the next reveal is right around the corner. I would give it 3.5 stars if I could.
Language-wise, this book feels accurately placed in the mid-30s. As someone who's only read books recommended for beginners before this, this was the hardest thing I've ever read by far. Very text-dense, introspective sections, rare vocab and a tendency to use long, convoluted sentences all contribute to this. Took me a lot longer than the relatively low page count might suggest.
Good book for JLPT N1 Grammar and Business Vocab
Six students go job hunting. The interview takes an unexpected turn. One of the characters then tries to solve this turn throughout the book.
The vocabulary focuses on 就職活動. You will also get to learn business vocabulary, like 社屋、見繕う or 社屋. The latter part of the book is especially good for mining JLPT N1 Grammar, like ～さもないと or ～に～ない.
The story was okay: The author is really good at putting in little teasers, which keep the reader engaged. This makes it entertaining. But if you are looking for deep characters, insane plot twists or humor, you won't enjoy it, in my opinion.
Surprisingly Good
I know a lot of people were disappointed by the second half of the book, and to be honest, I almost put this book down when i hit the second half. But I really liked it in the end.
Going from the fast-paced drilling mystery to the slower introspective second half was jarring at first. But then as more twists and truthes were revealed...I really liked it.
Working for a Japanese company made me really empathise with the characters and I liked the overall message of the story.
The Japanese is advanced but great for work related vocabulary and high level literary.
This book will make you internalize "ように/ような" grammar point in no time
It's a solid book overall. It's not only about mystery, there are other themes like human drama and work culture, which I like more than the mystery part. What I didn't like about this book is when it starts to reveal the culprit's motivation. It feels anti-climactic, one-dimensional, and lacks depth. Although to be fair, their reasoning makes sense to me and is explained further in the latter part of the book, but still the motivation left me unsatisfied and I think it can be better than that.
As for the difficulty, this is the hardest Japanese book I've read so far. It really tests your Japanese ability to the fullest. Heavy use of uncommon words and 4-6 descriptive sentences filled with idioms and N1/N2 grammar. This almost always happens every time the author tries to describe a scene or a state of emotion, very rarely do they use straightforward prose to describe something. It didn't shy away from 四字熟語 either, you will find a handful of them in this book. Here is an example sentence when the author tries to describe a change of facial expression:
頑固一徹と思考放棄は表裏一体だった。
I know the second one is technically not a 四字熟語 but still, it's a little snippet of what's to come. I would recommend this book if you want to challenge yourself, it's also perfect for mining into Anki or other SRS because of the heavy use of uncommon words and idioms.
*I want to give this book 3.5 but the site can't do that so I'm stuck with 4.
I almost gave it 3 stars only because there were lots of time where I didn’t enjoy reading the book, for my taste the text was often too dense, too long chapters and not a lot of dialog, and a lot of things that I think could have been shortened. But that could be just my own reading speed making it feel like a drag ^_^' In the end I think my review is mostly positive because I was entertained (mostly), and it has a lot of food for thoughts. Not sure though that it’s a book that I would go out of my way to recommend other people to read.
I liked the straightforward writing style and the story development with its many twists and turns. It also helps with internalizing business and 就活 vocab.
Reading the afterword, it makes sense why the story and the plot twists felt so meticulously engineered, almost sterile. But I enjoyed reading the book nonetheless, which made it a smooth read.