Specs
More Information
Reviews
(3.65/5)Basic plot: Student found dead in the gym. Whodunit?
Audiobook: The audiobook for this has low production quality, but it's faithful to the text. If you don't mind bad mixing, it's useable for the reading/listening method.
Difficulty: There is a scattering of anime references and such that weren't meaningful to me, but which also weren't meaningful to the other characters in the book so in terms of difficulty can probably be safely ignored. It might be a bonus if there are references you get, though.
The language can be pretty casual and conversations veer all over the place. There's also an extensive cast (character list at the front of the book though).
This book is aimed at kids, my guess being middle school or thereabouts. Adults can of course read and enjoy fiction for younger audiences, but it's something to be aware of in case it's not a genre you like. The difficulty I'd place as being pretty standard for any novel, adult or YA. Vocab isn't too crazy, language isn't too flowery, deep thinking to understand meaning is not an issue.
A logic puzzle in book form
This is a honkaku mystery, and the reader can really deduce the solution to the mystery after having been presented with all the facts. That's the only pleasure I got out of the book though, and even those facts were often tedious to read the first time, and definitely tedious to go over again when trying to work out the solution.
This could have been a good short story, but in my opinion it was way too long for what it offered, which was a long list of alibis and other dry facts among a lot of uninspiring dialogue. The characters were flat, more a list of names and roles than actual characters. I reached the end of the book and I still couldn't tell apart several of them.
To be fair, the book is probably targeted at a much younger audience than me, although this was never clearly stated. In retrospect, the fact that it takes place at a high school should have tipped me off.
The language is easy to follow for the most part, and there's a lot of dialogue throughout. I read along with the audiobook, and this helped fly through the dialogue. I suspect that I might have had trouble understanding who was speaking or in what way they meant what they were saying at some points if not for the audio, but it wouldn't have mattered much anyway.
Locked room mystery set in a highschool
Such a fun mystery read!! There is a huge cast of characters and it's kinda hard to keep up with all the names but I loved the main cast so much. I also really love the challenge for the readers to solve the mystery themselves!! very interactive and super enjoyable. Before starting this though please keep in mind that this is a young adult at the end of the day so please suspend any disbelief cause some of the events here really are absurd. Like, come on, this is about a highschool locked room murder and one of the characters lives in an abandoned room in the campus.
Language wise this maybe a little challenging as there's a lot to keep up with in the story generally. Many anime and pop culture references (that even some of the characters don't get so it doesn't really affect the language level).
Overall, highly recommend!! If you've never read mysteries before I think this can make for a good first mystery.