嫌いなら呼ぶなよ

4 short stories, all taking place in the time just after the height of the pandemic, but with the pandemic as the background rather than the main subject. Each of the main characters have their own quirks, extreme or more common, and find themselves in unusual situations through (at least partly) their own doing. While there's much to criticise about all four of them, they get their point of view across in such a way that it's almost easy to sympathize with them despite their (sometimes unexplainable) behaviour.

The language is modern and casual, and it did give me the occasional difficulty because of that. There's puns, slang, more katakana than average, social media vocabulary, etc. All stories are more or less in the stream of consciousness style, with the last one being basically a series of emails, with some thoughts in between. There's definitely some subtle humour throughout the book. Definitely more humour than drama.

I did like the setup in all stories, and the characters did come alive, but I expected more of a punch than I got. I didn't feel much urgency to keep on reading, but that's not to say I didn't enjoy it. Just that I expected to enjoy it more.

A note on the audiobook: There's only one narrator for all characters, and for some of these characters her voice just didn't feel right to me (for example it was just too sweet and chirpy for one particular male character). Eventually I realized I understood the book better without reading along with the audio, as I found the voice distracting and even a little confusing.