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A book about grief and novel writting
Entertainment - I started to read this book without much expectation or knowledge towards the events in it. I couldn't find any translated review or reference about it so I pretty much went blindly. The story follows Somei, a teenager who has been facing some difficulties in life due to a recent loss. After the passing of a friend, he falls into a depression slump, where he just exists. Suddenly, he starts to receive messages from his deceased friend. Intrigued, he decides to maintain a conversation that leads him to some discoveries about himself and said friend, through their love for books. It's a story about dealing with grief and hope, while facing the begin of the teenager phase.
Language Learning - To put my skills in perspective, at the moment I started reading, I was WaniKani level 38 with roughly 4.000 words under my belt and have been already exposed to all Tobira grammar points and Bunpro N3 Grammar, I wouldn't recommend this as a first novel to someone who has never read a book in Japanese, I'd say it's more to the seasoned reader who already have consumed more manga (specially level 24 and above here on the platform) or even other children's novel. The grammar aren't that intricate, I'd say the majority is covered within JLPT N3 and some N2 level. The vocabulary uses some words related to book writing and authorship, the rest are slice of life, the usage of furigana are limited to the first occurrence of a word, including in all names instance. Because of the slice of life thematic, I'd say it's well suited for one who are learning the Language as the vocabulary will be present in almost all day to day life situations.
Overall - Due to the slow pace of the book and lack of action scenes, it might not be a story for some audience. To me it was interesting, it hold its value within the vocabulary used in slice of life titles, together with some slightly more complicated sentences then those observed in children's novels. This was my first experience with a N2 novel (rated here in the platform) so the beginning was filled with challenges and in some points struggle due to the fact that I wasn't used to encounter those N3/N2 grammar constructions in the wild. By the end of the book the number of search per page was reduced by half with longer paragraphs without the need of dictionary assistance. So an early intermediate reader might face some learning curve.