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I wavered between 4 and 5 stars, it's on that line, but I think I'm too impressed by how many details this weaves together in all of its tricks to not reach for the 5. The book is an intricately planned mystery, solvable but convoluted enough to make that difficult, which ended with a satisfying mix of things I intuited and things I couldn't begin to guess. Fun read, flows well, almost gives me the same sort of bombastic mystery vibes I get from some videogames/VNs that I love.
The downsides making 4 possible mostly come from a lot of repetition (which, to be fair, can be nice for language learners), some side characters fading into the background, and the huge chunk of mystery references. This book LOVES mystery novels. And for someone who loves them as much this might be cool, but it's less "references" to them and more having characters monologue for a page with lists of author and book titles over and over. Early on I honestly got pretty tired of it, but I'm glad I stuck through that.
It starts a little harder to read than it'll actually be due to a lot of description of the building it takes place in, but once you get started, the vocab is fairly self-contained and you can start smoothly running through with all the words you learned/refreshed in the first quarter. It's pretty generous with the furigana and despite somewhat long sentences, all feels pretty straightforward.