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Fantastic first novel.
The story follows Hanabi, a young girl who wants to create a new version of herself when she starts middle school, however, she fails her entrance exams and is put into a local school, which her former bullies also attend. It's a very simple plot which was expected as this book is aimed at kids of a similar age and younger.
As this was my first novel in Japanese (reading along with the WK bookclub), I struggled at first, but quickly found after a few chapters it was the perfect level for me (N3 studying N2). The chapters are short and is often quite dialogue heavy, with the descriptions written through the eyes of Hanabi.
The vocab is relatively simple, however there are some sewing & cooking terms that may throw people off. Grammar wise I found a couple of N1 points scattered about, however the book is definitely mostly N3 level grammar.
Overall, it's a wholesome cute story and has given me a lot of confidence in starting my next book. In the beginning a chapter would take a me a couple of sittings, and now 1 chapter can easily be read within an hour.
10/10 would recommend as a first novel.