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(3.50/5)A lot of my thoughts are very similar to what cat's already written about this. If you want a little thriller about murder, stalking, and some warped sexuality filtered through modern era technology, this delivers, trash and all. That's the neutral kind of trash -- this is and knows it is a trashy thriller, and that's totally fine.
Most of my qualms relate to details of the writing, not what it's trying to do as a whole. There are certainly too many explanations that stop to explain viruses, common cybersecurity mistakes, the concept of Facebook, and on and on. It also just felt a little light in personality, coasting on its overall ideas with characters that are just functional but a little predictable and not easy to get attached to. You get pretty on the nose concrete answers as to why someone turns to crime and it definitely feels oversimplified, rushed on the characterization side. The ending helps with its big developments -- some I called, others I didn't but maybe should have. Things are a little thin leading up to there though, because it's spending almost the whole book holding its hand, waiting to throw all that out at once.
I'd like it if Japanese art had a more healthy skepticism for police, but that is what it is as a cultural thing, and it didn't actually dive into "if only people's rights weren't getting in the way of a good investigation!" the way it threatened to. There's a very bizarre sentence or two that I think is meant to be about people misrepresenting themselves online, but comes across as sudden random transphobia, but... yeah, cultural differences eh.
The writing is easy and straightforward here; not particularly descriptive or flowery, and with loads of useful repetition. The only real downside as an early book is that it's a lot lengthier than the 3 I've read before this. Probably not truly long, but at an earlier learner slow reading speed, you might feel it. Took me a long time to get through, but books have always sat as side projects to my VN reading so that's more my fault.
Plus, I was slowed down by using the audiobook! I did read this, but my listening is rough so I did an audiobook pass both before and after reading a chapter. I felt big gains through this one book, and the audiobook is nice and clear, so I highly recommend the technique if you're like me: starting to get comfortable in reading but still with questionable listening.
If you do not want to read about adult sexual themes (some nonconsensual) and violence this is not your book.
Broadly a book about obsession, stalking, and murder. A very easy read, there's not much for fancy sentences here. Definitely falls into common crime story tropes and plods along pretty predictably. I enjoyed it well enough - sometimes something mindless is fun. The second half of the book really pulls you along but the first half is a slow burn. There are movies based on this book series which seem like they might also be worthwhile.
edit: I watched the movie based on this book and I disliked it so much I didn't even finish it. They changed the plot substantially and the characters were unlikeable.
There was one chapter that made me go and check the publication date (2017?!) because it was basically an explanation of how to use Facebook dressed up as a dialogue between two characters. There were also contrived conversations about types of serial killers and what social engineering is, among other things. Lots of over explanation here - after awhile it started to feel like Baby's First Murder Mystery.
I didn't have much in the way of vocab to look up but if you are unfamiliar with either crime vocab (body parts, legal terms, detective slang) or basic computer/tech vocab you might have some dictionary time ahead of you. I did have a small handful of phrases to look up (矢面に立つ, 灸を据える, etc). I enjoy collecting those so that was great.
I really liked the audiobook but it does change and remove some words. Nothing extreme and it's consistent what words it does this with.