Uketsu, Jim Rion (Translator)

Book Review

Rating: 4 stars

this is a thriller mystery, true crime book written in the format that is new to me, and it was incredibly accessible, which made this a very enjoyable read

the formatting:
-the author is basically talking to the reader and showing them emails and an article and back-and-forth conversations and then reiterating a story, but it’s done in such a profoundly well job and executed so well that it made sense and it felt like the story had to be told in this way
-there are many graphics of houses and images of houses drawings whatever you want to call them and none of them impede or minimize accessibility to the text at all, which is impressive
-I think because the change in formatting was so minimal, even though it was addressed change in the way, the story was told to some extent it made it both engaging and easy to follow

I have a lot of thoughts so I will start with my pre-read thoughts
I had this book recommended to me at least three times (and I’m unfortunately someone that judges Books by covers at times and I’ll admit the cover caused me to not give this book a chance for a very long time)
I genuinely thought this book was going to be written and formatted in a very eerie Jeff Vandemeer type of way, and I had a feeling that was going to heat it, and so I was immediately relieved when this book was almost the opposite

My during read thoughts:
-I really liked having the photos of the houses within the book
-Many times when stories are being told they aren’t formatted well for an E reader, and the images no longer become accessible, so to have this be an accessible book with huge for me
-I was immediately intrigued and at 20% and I knew I had to finish this one, many of my soft DNF with my mysteries and thrillers really happen in the first three chapters in this book just kept me going
-this book got weirder and weirder and weirder, and the plot thickened and characters became more intertwined and it just got really fascinating and I thought I would hate having so many characters involved because my experience with other books that are murder mysteries with a lot of characters I tend to get confused however it didn’t seem like as a reader you needed to fundamentally remember the names in the characters as they weren’t really given much to them beyond their places in this mystery solving case
-I loved how this book made me think about architecture and people building things and I love that it got me into reading more true crime and watching true crime because I had this impression that true crime was lot of making entertainment and fun of very sensitive topics and that does not seem to be the case at all
-Obviously, some true crime entertainment sources are not gonna be great, but for the majority of what I’ve been seeing on Hulu and the library and Netflix, a lot of true crime material that is entertainment tries to help these victims, and by nature of telling a sincere story it becomes really good to watch. The true crime lovers understand.

My after reading thoughts:
-I was weirdly disappointed by the ending of this book at 80% in after the big reveal was given?

• I felt it was a bit anti-climatic because I was meant to keep up with all of these different characters within a chapter, and I felt like I had been given the information as to what happened in the book was over
  -this is why I’m keeping my rating at four stars instead of five because I feel like this book even though it’s as short as it is and it’s told really well I feel like the ending could’ve been explained a little bit better and told in a way that was slightly more accessible because it was just confusing and the only portion of the book that was genuinely hard to follow beyond the main who dunit reveals
  -The irony of this book is that it does seem to be inspired by true events, if not something that actually happened, and it seems like a lot of crimes that take place have really weird origin stories behind them

This book is probably one that will stick with me just because if it’s uniqueness and I would definitely recommend it to people who want a good mystery or thriller and are OK with some gore, but please be aware that there are some pretty hefty topics in this one like child abuse for example. This is not a happy mood reading book. This is definitely a spooky scary book so know that going into it but I’m hoping based on the genre you’ll be aware of that..

This book was strange and all of the best ways that it has me hooked on books again and I think it pulled me out of a reading slump that I did not know that was in that was caused by stress and exhaustion

I love this author’s writing style and I’m grateful that there is a translator that did such a wonderful job so this is definitely a book I would recommend and if I saw on the Bookstore, I would buy it just to have on my bookshelf because it’s got such a weird cover and I know it’s ironic because I didn’t pick up the book due to the cover looking weird but now I wanna buy it because the cover is so unique

This is one of those books that opens my mind a little bit and alters my brain chemistry because it makes me more open to different formatting in books

Wow, it’s super important for the actual content to be accessible if it’s on an E reader
I’m going to go in with a more open minded about different types of books moving forward so brain chemistry altered. Thank you.

I’m using voice memo to write this review out so if something looks weird, please know that it was probably technology auto correcting and not me

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