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Good for those new to reading in Japanese
Content warnings: plot centres around a suicide attempt, also references to child(early teen) sex work
I read this book with a little book club of two other people, where we read it on a schedule and discussed it as we went. The book was a good fit for that. It’s short and broken up into manageable chapters, the vocabulary and grammar used is not too difficult and it has an audiobook (always a big plus for me). As the main character is a character in the last year of middle school there is also a fair bit of discussion in the book about the Japanese school system, entrance exams etc which was another interesting element.
So language wise - a really good pick! Enjoyment wise, if I could have rated this 3 and a half stars for that I would as it is enjoyable and sometimes pretty funny. However it does very much feel like a book written for early teens, maybe one that would be assigned in school as it has a kind of moral point to make. That isn’t a bad thing, and it’s well written, just a little too ‘after school special’ for me at times.