クラスメイツ 〈前期〉

A collection of short, inter-linked stories where each chapter centers on one student from middle-school class of 24 kids, giving us a brief view into their life as they transition to adulthood. Feels a bit like a poor mans きみの友だち but I still enjoyed it and would recommend to anyone who likes these bittersweet coming-of-age style stories.

I imagine this is aimed at middle-school students so I think this would be a very natural choice for an early book to read as an intermediate learner, especially for someone looking to transition from children's books to more adult focused literature. It hits that sweet spot where N3 grammar will get you most of the way but you will still see some higher level structures, where there isn't full furigana but some words are written in hiragana that might be in kanji in adults books, and where vocabulary is mostly limited to daily-life words but there's still a decent smattering of rarer terms, idiomatic expressions and varied speaking styles.