チュベローズで待ってる AGE22

Content warnings: explicit sex scenes, suicide

This book is about a young man who graduates from college but is unable to find a job during the new grad job application time frame, and is put in a very tight spot. He needs to support his family (there are circumstances putting them in bad spot financially), but part time job wages likely won't be enough. However, he's approached by a man scouting him for a host club, which promises high wages but is also part of the darker night life scene.

This book was a very fast and fun read. I had to look up a good deal of words (so expect a vocabulary stretch), but the way it was written made it very easy to zoom through despite that. An interesting book is always faster than a boring one.

There is some 関西弁 and casual speech, as well as a bit of formal speech near the end of the book.

I personally felt the ending was a bit weak and felt rather rushed compared to the rest of the book. The start of the book felt gritty and realistic (or realistic enough) and the further through I got the more it drifted away from that.

I still enjoyed it over all and plan to read the second book in the series.

edit: I stopped reading the second book a few chapters in. It's not nearly as good.

This was a pleasant read, and not difficult if you exclude some light 関西弁.

The book follows the protagonist's attempts to find a job after university, and his life as a host, a job he takes up temporarily in order to support himself and his family before he can try to enter the job market again next year. The author admits in the afterword that he didn't do much research into host clubs, but mainly drew on his own experiences as a male idol, so if you're looking for an accurate account this may not be it. There are multiple likeable characters, and the way the chapters are structured will make you want to keep reading.

This is volume one of a two-volume set that is supposed to be taken as one unit, but you may want to stop reading here. The next volume follows the same protagonist a decade later, and the tone is quite different. Some events of this volume are revisited and reevaluated, but in my opinion this volume would be better off as a standalone book.