Strange Pictures - Uketsu, Jim Rion (Translator)

[quiet marten]

From <t:1742515200:D> to <t:1747785600:D> | Leader(s): @slender kraken

Book Link
Cover: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1728787087i/216670080.jpg

ID: 67d48219e7dc3608f71688d1
Announcement: #buddy-reads message

[slender kraken]

[tiny talon]

[slate nebula]

Woohoo!!

[shadow sand]

libby said there was 8 weeks wait for this but my hold became avaible today

[slate nebula]

I have an ebook and an audiobook on storytel! I'm not sure how it'll work as an audiobook, but I might use it for the dead commute time!

[scarlet solstice]

[candid owl]

Prologue: For reference, I knew absolutely nothing about this book going in. I saw horror, low page count and clicked join. And.. ||eh.. I am unsure if this book will be for me.

This Drawing Test described in the prologue sounds like mumbo jumbo to me. Similar to being told an author describing the curtains as blue means he was sad. (Which we were told, repeatedly, in school when we were working on analyzing written works) But then, I am a notoriously bad drawer. Spiky trees my kiwi. I'm terrible at drawing AND I'm a perfectionist. I'd have smudged that mouth a dozen time because it didn't look right. (There is a reason I never learned to get better at it)||

We will see if Uketsu changes my mind.

[quiet marten]

@slender kraken,@hallow kite,@calm oriole,@stray vault,@tiny talon,@slate nebula,@odd kraken,@candid owl,@past stirrup,@scarlet solstice,@agile sky,@coral elk,@shadow sand,@uncut spindle,@stuck wyvern,@pseudo agate,@barren dagger,@orchid shell,@rich acorn,@zinc herald,@tough swan

Hi! This starts today!
I'm going in moderately blind so I'm going to be asking some generic warmup questions, hope everybody has a great time!

1. Is there a particular reason you were drawn to this read?

2. Do you enjoy Japanese horror? Have you engaged with it in any other mediums? Any favourites you want to mention?

[calm oriole]

Woohoo!

4 week wait

[candid owl]

1. I adore horror, but my experience with it is in a very narrow field and I've been wanting to expand and apparently OBC just keeps throwing 200+ page horror books my way.

2. I have very little experience with Japanese horror, I know they are famous for their movies, and the few I've seen absolutely terrify me. Which is why I tend to actively avoid them. (Outside of books, I scare real easily)

[stuck wyvern]

Queued up and ready to start tomorrow! I’ll be sitting for a tattoo so might just read it all in one sitting. 😅

[scarlet solstice]

1. Vaude read, horror read, interesting concept, weird book; checks out

2. I love horror manga and I've really enjoyed some horror reads in the past! Anything Junji Ito, PTSD Radio, Bibliomania, Blood on the Tracks, Hideout, Dragon Head... I can't put them all in one list.

3. YES! I love Japanese horror films and games as well

[tiny talon]

1. Rin recommended it to me, so I went and bought it!
2. I haven’t read a lot of Japanese literature because I tend to dislike a lot of aspects, but I really enjoyed the Junji Ito collection on Netflix

[slate nebula]

I dnf'd my current read, so I'll start this earlier than planned!

[shadow sand]

prologue ||the problem with drwings is that you often learn from what you are taught like i remember my mom teaching me how to draw grass so wouldnt the way i draw grass say more about my mothers brain than mine im not an expert so like i might be wrong though||

start of chapter 1
im going in 100% blind on this one like i dont even know the genres i only know the cover and that Rin liked it but it already has me hooked

chapter 1 ||"But we were told that with proper preparation, she should be able to deliver her breech baby normally. We’re lucky we’ve got a veteran midwife on hand!" why not get a C-section ||

[shadow sand]

chapter 1 ||i love how the reader figures stuff out with Sasaki like every time i think about a new angle he figures it out too i find that usually authors dont find that balance so either i guess the plot or im so lost that im jut following along as the characters figure it out||

chapter 1

||Yuki had secretly drawn a picture of her own death. Those words, ‘visions of the future . . .’ They lay heavy on his heart. ‘Yuki predicted her own death?’ he asked Kurihara. ‘You think she had the power of precognition?’ ‘I mean, if not, how would you explain it?’ ‘Well, it could have been that she knew someone was going to kill her.’ Kurihara was matter-of-fact.||
||okay i get where they are coming from but my first reaction if i saw this wouldnt be oh she predicted her death it would be oh this woman has very valid fears that she for some reason cant express like every pregnancy is risky but in this case there already was a heightened chance of her ending up in emergency surgery so isnt it a normal fear for anyone in that case that you might die ||

chapter 2

||But on the linoleum? In permanent marker? And this wasn’t the first time either. Earlier he had drawn on the bathroom wall. And before that it was the pillar in the living room. She had scrubbed and scrubbed, but they had only faded a little, not disappeared.||
||my brother did this once in the hallway and my dog apparently didnt like it because he tore away the wallpaper in the exact same spot ||

[shadow sand]

chapter 2

||Ms Haruoka watched them walk off, hand in hand, with a light heart. Those two, at least, were so close that abuse was simply out of the question.||
||ummmm thats not how it works ||

chapter 2

||It took no time for her to decide. She gripped the knife in both hands and thrust it into the man.||
|| https://tenor.com/view/merlinators-sincewaybck-gif-11919108918713224114 ||

[stuck wyvern]

Just finished chapter 1 🥲

[candid owl]

Chapter 1: || Me staring intently at the drawings looking for clues and seeing nothing ||

[candid owl]

Chapter 1: ||Okay I gasped at Kurihara telling us how dangerous a breech baby is and how doctors always schedule a caesarean.

I don't think they got a bogus doctor tho, they said they had a midwife. Maybe they got midwives at hospitals in Japan? But to me, that screams homebirth

I don't understand why Sasaki got chills at being told there might be a third person living with them that the blog avoids mentioning. Could just be an annoying (adult) sibling that they're trying to ignore and that is living with them for a time.||

Chapter 1: ||WHAT!? What kind of ending is this! ||

[slate nebula]

Chapter 1, 8%: ||I got invested 😆 Blogs carry a certain nostalgia. Since we're reading horror, my guess will be that Yuki knew from the beginning that she was having a demonic child that will kill her at birth and that was her sin for not sharing with her husband.||

[cursive lynx]

this might be a silly question but are there actually pictures you gotta see? like would reading the ebook of this be not as good as a physical copy?

[odd kraken]

i have the same question as jnix

because i went to the bookstore and i can’t find a copy of it

[shadow sand]

yes but im reading the e-book and dont feel like im missing out on anything
i think its only the audiobook that would dim the experience but its not like its impossible to listen to the audiobook i just wouldnt reccomend it

[odd kraken]

okay thank u amanda :3

[shadow sand]

chapter 3

||‘I understand there were stab wounds as well as signs he was struck with a rock over two hundred times.’||
|| thats alot so i assume it was someone who knew him and not a random person ||

[cursive lynx]

thank you Amanda !!!!

[shadow sand]

a little over halfway through chapter 3 || im really curious how this story connects to the other two because so far i havent been able to see any connection ||

[shadow sand]

chapter 3 ||im not sure i completely trust Kameido ||

chapter 3

||he wouldn’t have been able to see the mountains, so he couldn’t have drawn them||
||hmmm wasnt it said that he regularly went up the mountain and drew the view so if he had drawn it enough times then he might have been able to remember the view ||

[shadow sand]

finished chapter 3 and so far im really enjoying this book i really need to read more mystery books but they are always such a hit or miss for me

[past stirrup]

Starting today

[past stirrup]

Chapter 1 || Okay that was actually an interesting chapter but... was it the end? Is every chapter a different story or are they connected We still didn't get answers as to who could be the 3rd person living with them, midwife, and the breech baby being dangerous. I can't shake the feeling that Yuki actually not just knew she will die but like she planned it, she wanted it? Oh well let's see if this story will even come back ||

Oh and I am glad my ebook has pictures included. I guess I would say so far it's manageable without but they add... something for me.

[shadow sand]

the final chapter

||You have to take care of it yourself, now,’ Father said, and Naomi nodded vigorously.||
||Great idea because 10 year olds are well know too have the mental maturity of taking care of another living being /s seriously though get her a tamagotchi or something for christ sake also animals are not a one time purchase the bills add up like food,vet and care no parent should get a pet for their child without being willing to bear the most of the responsibility and seriously getting a pet like that without thinking it over is so stupid ||
||like for example i got a cat when i was around 12 but my parents never expected me to pay the bills and though it is part of my chores to feed the animals its not like they wont do it if i cant||
||also most pets risk living longer than a child will live at home and most people when they first move out dont have the time or money for another living being so are the parents willing to take care of the bird then||

the final chapter

||Naomi forced out the words, her voice quivering. Mother continued to pick up the shards as she muttered, as if to herself, ‘It should have been you who died, not him.’||
||ngl reminds me of my grandma ||

[shadow sand]

the final chapter ||im so confused i assume its gonna be explained though||

[shadow sand]

the final chapter ||imagine findin out your wife like you because you look like your dad and that she is trying to look like you mother freud would have a fieldday with this ||

the final chapter ||naomi would be such a tiktok boymom ||

[past stirrup]

|| That is too funny ||

Finished Chapter 2 || Already somewhere in the middle of the story, I realised it's still connected to the first story. Three years and the father died, just like the three years erased from the blog? So before Yuta went to his real mother's grave I knew it was Yuki from the first chapter. It just made sense with the timeline and everything. Probably the last message on the blog is just before Raku died (killed himself?). Funny how Raku changed his name for the blog to avoid giving personal info but didn't change the name of his wife Also, I agree with what Amanda said before, I also rolled my eyes at "Ms Haruoka watched them walk off, hand in hand, with a light heart. Those two, at least, were so close that abuse was simply out of the question." Yeah, if only it was that simple. So Naomi is Raku's mother, and she was the third person living with them, I assume? Maybe? And that last scene of the chapter... like wtf. How are you inviting someone random to your house and then stabbing them like that?! I'm confused. ||

[shadow sand]

i finished and will write my review later since i have to go soon

[jolly hatch]

i finished and will
write my review later since
i have to go soon

- Amanda is hibernating

[shadow sand]

okay safe to say i really liked this
||Im always for having pictures/drawings in books like it has often been associated with childrens books but why cant adults have fun too i dont think you suddenly stop enjoying looking at pretty things when you turn 15 i used to think that i didnt like mysteries that much but i think japanese mysteries are an excpetion because i keep loving them my biggest problem with this book was just that sometimes the characters came to these far fetched conclusions when a more normal explanation was right in front of them but its fiction so im fine with it being a little dramatic i just love how every piece of the puzzle slowly comes together and sometimes you think its figured out but then a new piece is revealed and everything is shaken up again also the way the prologue tied into the end was really nice||
4/5

[candid owl]

and @odd kraken they show all the pictures, but, what is really neat is that when the characters talk about the drawings, and they talk about specific parts of it, they also show a zoomed in image of that part.

It's really well done tbh

[odd kraken]

thanks so much for letting me know peridot!

[past stirrup]

Chapter 3 || Not many thoughts. Probably the chapter I liked the least because was a bit confusing and ngl boring with all the technical information every minute and what and when. It turned unexpectedly bloody tho? I think this connection and explanation of the mountain picture in this chapter was the weakest, at least felt so to me ||

[past stirrup]

Chapter 4 || That went unexpectedly wild, or maybe it was just me who didn't expect that. It just turned so... Melodrama + rollercoaster. Some things far fetched to me like Kumai taking care of Yuta in the end because "I tell you about the blog so you will get the surgery and then adopt a random kid and take care of him for the rest of your life". Like what? ||

[past stirrup]

Okay finished and it was okay. Enjoyable but with issues || Firstly, I liked the idea of having mystery hidden in the pictures, that was probably the best thing about this book. I liked how the chapters felt like different stories but eventually connected in the end. I didn't like the excessive repetition and over-explanation. In Chapter 3 it was insane how many times I had to read about what time he went hiking, when and what he ate, and those timeline pictures multiple times! I am okay and not okay with Naomi being literally behind everything? I don't know there were some things in the plot/thinking that were not sitting right with me that I can't exactly point out. Like with the time of death of Miura that police really couldn't figure out when he died, Yuki knowing she will die but doing nothing about it, just drawings?! Like what was the point here. And the amount of deaths was surprising. Oh and the suicide note "yeah totally valid it was a typewriter, never have I ever seen someone faking suicide like that, case closed" I don't know just a bit too many things for me that bothered me. I enjoyed the first half of the book more, then it started tiring me. Writing was also... simple but you never know what is translation problem and what is not. Also I am not the biggest fan of like info dumping at the very end of mystery novels like "here you have all those things you couldn't have known but they explain things". Anyway a lot negative but like it read fast and I did finish it in a day so can't only complain, was for sure a fun and new experience || 3/5

[slate nebula]

Chapter 1, 12%: ||was someone else living with them?! ||

First page of Chapter 2: ||different characters?? I hope they're all linked somehow. ||

[slate nebula]

Chapter 2, 27%: ||oh no, the boy is gone!! || It reads pretty fast! I think I enjoy it so far.

Chapter 2, 28%: ||Naomi is avoiding the police like the plague. I wonder why and if it has anything to do with Yuki's "sin" in the previous chapter.||

[slate nebula]

Chapter 2, 39%: ||abuse is out of the question because they're holding hands? If only it worked like that. ||

[slate nebula]

Amanda, this cracked me up

[slate nebula]

Chapter 3, 42%: ||wow, looks like this teacher was completely different from what we're led to believe in the beginning of the chapter ||

[slate nebula]

Chapter 3, 61%: ||Oh, so Kameido is Yuki! I wonder if she killed the teacher and that's the sin her husband later talked about.||

Chapter 3, 64%: ||there's no way in hell I would spend an entire night camping at a remote place that was also a murder scene||

Chapter 3, 68%: ||WHAT IF Yuki lied about the class and is on her way to kill Iwata, knowing that he'll be alone up the mountain ||

[slate nebula]

End of Chapter 3: ||Naomi?! Now I see everything under a new light. Can't trust her much that she called Yuki a horrible woman in the previous chapter.||

Final Chapter, 76%: ||WTF! Naomi has been killing people since childhood?!||

[slate nebula]

Finished! Overall an interesting idea, ||I enjoyed the pictures and their interpretation. However, I didn't appreciate much the kind of melodramatic final chapter and Naomi's motive for killing Yuki. It was a 4-star read for the first half, but I felt my interest declining towards the end.|| 3.25/5

[zinc herald]

Ordered book, should be here by Monday.
1 Liked the description, the idea of insanity/ horror being transmitted in images.
2 Watched the movie House—wow

[real marten]

I have acquired a library copy, so I might join this?
Unless it’s too icky. Is it icky?

[slender kraken]

I have no idea where this stands on the ickimetre but I'll do some research

[candid owl]

I'm only on chapter 2 out of 4 but there is no ickyness yet imo

[real marten]

Thank you!!

[candid owl]

End of chapter 2: ||Okay, I'm happy that the end of chapter 1 wasn't actually the end like I assumed and that it is a continuous story. I might have gasped when it was revealed.

CRAZY how she instantly stabs who she assume is a stalker, like, EVEN IF that is true THATS NOT SELF DEFENSE! And BOY if you're not a friggin stalker you're kind of approaching this the ENTIRELY WRONG WAY BRO!! You weirdo

Still dont know what the mother did! ||

[candid owl]

|| how did you clock that it was the same family from the beginning.

And idk, because the kid left alone? is.. is calling the police normal in that scenario? isnt looking around first the thing you do before calling the cops? looking for HOURS maybe not but atleast a walk around the neighborhood||

[slate nebula]

For the first question ||I don't remember exactly the point, I think it was something with the mention of the three years that clicked something in my mind? ||
For the second ||I think the first period immediately after the disappearance is very crucial? And the boy was already gone for a couple of hours when Naomi woke up.||

In any case, ||I would have called even the army in her position ||

[candid owl]

||Yeees, it is in the case of a kidnapping. This is very true. Even if she had proof the child left alone.

I guess it is also different if you live in the city, where the cops is, assumedly, right around the corner. It isn't like she didn't have a cellphone either, since the teacher called her while she was looking. So she could have called the cops and not waited for them to arrive.||

Chapter 3: prediction, ||yuki was the student the art teacher was one-on-one with the day he died? and SHE killed him??||

also, ||WILD to me all these people saying they disliked the murder victim so strongly, like 0 self protection against a murder charge here. ||

[candid owl]

End of Chapter 3: ||see, the sentence from the blog "Nor can I understand the depths of whatever sin you committed." is problematic because it makes it sound like Haruto/raku didn't know what the specific sin was.

But, the end of chapter 3 reveals it was haruto's mom that killed the art teacher, which makes me think that the final blog post "to the one I love the most" is aimed at his mom, that he figured out her secrets. and that maybe his mom is a psycho serial killer that killed his wife because she was getting in the way of them living happy together (just like her old husband did apparently) (and maybe he killed himself out of guilt or something? idk) but, if he figured it out, why does he not understand the depth of the sin?||

I was only going to read one chapter tonight but I cant stop now

[shadow sand]

i didnt know that the authors identity was unknown

[candid owl]

Yes, I think that was an interesting thing as well. It's smart, writing mystery to mystery fans while presenting as a mystery

I never reported that I finished it.

||My feelings are.. muddled. I'm still not very convinced on this whole "drawings show something of your psyche" thing, but I feel like I cant make too big of a stink over that since the author.. also wrote doubts about it?

I'm NOT happy with Raku's suicide. Like, first of all, what about your son???? That's so unforgivable to me. And second of all, he only figured out ONE of his mothers sin, not all of them which makes the entire thing seem a little.. lackluster imo.

I liked how the author wrote this. How it gave the appearance of being one-shots, or mysterious incidents, possible supernaturals, just to ruin that and tie it all together. (I was 100% supernatural in chapter 1, so its interesting how it was all normal stuff). Even the prologue, that explains the basic idea, ties back into the story.

I find that the student having a broken leg (in the very end) and ending up next to the police officer to be VERY sus tho. Like the author leaving a little bit of mystery behind because that is TOO much of a coincidence to be real. I give it a high 4 out of 5 ||

[zinc herald]

Intro and Ch 1: ||more dead mothers than a Disney movie. Ok, is all going to tie together? Enjoyed the problem-solving process and the idea of the campus paranormal club. ||Reminds me of a perverse Little Prince w the drawings.

[tiny talon]

starting this tomorrow!

[tiny talon]

Almost done with chapter 1 and I’m loving this holy shit

[tiny talon]

Chapter 1
||This is so good I’m all for mystery, horror, creepy pictures and creepy blog entries. I really enjoyed this chapter and I hope the others will be just as good. I never would have been able to figure out what Sasaki and his friend did; like how do you even get to that?? And yet it’s so smart. Consider me hooked||

[tiny talon]

Same, I’ve never felt dumber

[candid owl]

I'm glad you're liking it so far Spinch!

[zinc herald]

Chapter 2: So it’s all about the process of the pictures and the information you gain. Questions: ||who is the little girl in the intro? The grandmother or her daughter-in-law, who she says is cursed? Everything with Naomi is fear-based. Fear of the police (bc she also killed her daughter-in-law?) Fear of the curse, fear of the mysterious stranger following them…if she is the original child artist, then the intro class would have taken place so long ago. Why does she look older than 64? Why was the blog called Oh no, not Raku? Because he is sick? Liked the kanji/ gravestone clue. Is Yuta in danger?||

[tiny talon]

chapter 2
||now, this one felt a little far fetched with the abuse, so i'm glad it wasn't the case. i like how this story is directly connected to the previous one and that yuta is the child from the first story. seems like naomi was trying to conceal her true age but why? to fit in with the other moms? regardless i'm curious to learn what her story with the police is also||

i also preordered the other one, Strange Houses, yesterday

[tiny talon]

Chapter 3
||This one felt so eerie. I was reading this last night in bed and felt the strong urge to draw a family tree to keep track of how everyone is connected. I might still do that because I’m a tiny bit lost as the story is a lot more overarching than I thought it would be. Seems like it boils down to one family?||

[tiny talon]

I finished this!
||At first I thought “this could be a cautionary tale for generational trauma and ‘what goes around, comes around’” but that’s not quite it. It seems to boil down to Naomi’s mother messing her up for life. It actually made me wonder about if kids killing their abusers being justified. I will admit that I was a little confused after the third chapter because there were so many names that were connected with each other and it was a little confusing. The fourth chapter did an amazing job explaining and linking everything though and that was great. It didn’t feel as hard to follow anymore and it was executed so well. I’m a huge fan of the overall theme and the idea of using child-like drawings to create a mystery that is then slowly solved. The first chapter blew me away and it was so easy to get into the story. I always have a bit of trouble getting into a new story when a new one starts from the new chapter, but the stories were linked which made it easier and I was focusing on trying to solve the mysteries myself. Turns out I could not have done that 💀 The pictures’ stories are so hidden and intricate; there was no way I would have been able to figure it out. I really enjoyed the little twists and turns as well, like the picture of the mountain that Miura drew to protect his wife so she could continue to care for their son. These pictures have so many possible interpretations and yet I couldn’t have figured out the right one in any way. I really enjoyed this book and it’s got to the one of the coolest concepts I’ve read so far. I already preordered the new one coming out||

[past stirrup]

Also will get the new one

[zinc herald]

So I did finish a couple nights ago. Have to say ||the twist with the time of the last drawing felt weak. Unless he’s making some meta point about motives for deception and confounding the most dedicated detective work. Still. Likewise w the beauty standards. Is he making a point about horror? And the misogyny, ditto. I guess his intentions are opaque as well. Of course I say “he”. Maybe author is a woman. Maybe start using “they”.
The puzzle was fun overall, obvs pretty gross towards the end. But horror. It’s a Japanese Mystery Horror Puzzle book. Definitely. || Open to all comments re analysis, at the end of the day (literally) I kept reading the book instead of watching Netflix. So score 1 for Oteksu (what does that mean if anything?). 6/10

[zinc herald]

Good point for sure about ||generational trauma, also the fallacy of expertise? W the first child psychologist…||

[odd kraken]

i‘m starting this now!

[odd kraken]

just finished little a and i‘m already intrigued and sat, cancelling my walk to sit down and read i love the pictures so much and i‘m so happy i snagged a physical copy

[odd kraken]

the old woman‘s prayer
page 37 ||you guys i am so invested in this. i have to wake up early tomorrow but i just want to stay up and read. i was devastated to hear that yuki died, and i have absolutely no clue who this third person is and i‘m curious to know what sin yuki had allegedly committed before she passed away.||
page 51 ||WHAT THE FUCKK||
i‘m so confused by the ending of this, please help

also @cursive lynx sorry for this ping but because you were asking if a paperback copy is necessary (or something along those lines) i‘m reading a paperback rn and i genuinely think i wouldn‘t have enjoyed it so much if i were reading on my kindle? like dot said, they have zoomed in graphics of when a character is speaking about a specific like, thing about the photo (omg does this make sense) and i really like having a physical copy in my hands

[cursive lynx]

Thank you Jana !!! that really helps actually I’ll probably wait on this one until I can get a paper copy

[odd kraken]

excited to read your thoughts!

[tiny talon]

I had the paperback too and I often went back to look at the pictures so I agree with jana

[slate nebula]

I read it as an ebook and it was decent! However, I'd love to be able to go back and forth easily.

[odd kraken]

the smudged room
page 67 ||listen if my son had drawn that i would have ordered an express exorcism for my apartment i can promise you that ||
page 69 ||i really love that naomi told ms. haruoka what was happening at home and why he might have drawn that and i also love that ms. haruoka was understanding and nice||
page 75 ||my heart is beating so fast throughout this. who is this man||
page 87 ||i looooove this chapter so much. ms. haruoka recreating the drawing to try and feel what yuta was feeling while drawing the details, oh god||
page 102 ||reading the yuki revelation i let out a sound that was not quite a squeal but sort of and with more distress.. i‘m loving the way everything‘s tying in together so far||
page 105 ||screaming because i thought naomi was in her 20s or something oh my days. oh my days is she the old woman in the first photo omg||

oh my god this book is so fucking good i‘m stumped

[tiny talon]

RIGHT

Always trust a rin recommendation

[odd kraken]

YESSSS

[odd kraken]

the art teacher‘s final drawing
all i have to say is ||holy shit and i did not see that coming. somehow i hoped the interviewer/journalist would stay alive but and, i also did not peg naomi to be the killer although maybe i should have, seeing how she didn‘t call the police when yuta went missing in the last chapter.|| added on with what dot said #1351097510650839040 message ||my theory rn is that naomi killed yuki too because she would have taken up too much of her son‘s love, but i hope this isn‘t the case||

[odd kraken]

omg you are so smart

i did not think of that at all, so big brain of you

i‘m being genuine

also i had to pee and i was too scared to leave my bedroom

[odd kraken]

okay i finished this, i really liked it. it tied up so beautifully at the end and all my questions were answered which i really appreciate spoilers for the ending ||i did sort of see it coming, naomi killing yuki, but i had my reasoning all wrong. and it felt very incestuous, for some reason, to want to be the mum of your son‘s son. i mean iirc naomi just said she wanted to be a mum in general, but still.||

[real marten]

Starting rn because I discovered that I can’t renew my library copy and it’s due in a few days

[real marten]

Prologue || I’ve learned about art therapy before and how our subconscious affects our visual output. Personally I can’t draw much if anything, but my husband is a self-taught cartoonist, and he’s also shared techniques that artists use for ratios etc.

The thing that struck me about those drawings was how oversized the girl was compared to the house or the tree. Kids apparently always oversize the person who is most important to them when they draw… so this kid really thought big of herself? lol ||

Ch 1 “The Old Woman’s Prayer”
|| I’m very curious about the relationship of these two characters talking about the mystery of this unknown man and his tragic family situation from many years ago. It seems a little odd that they can be kind of estranged, but be brought back together over this?

Also, the blog of the mystery itself is written kind of strangely, and I knew that she was not going to survive delivering a breech baby “naturally”. The rest of it with the perspective and the scale of the images and everything felt kind of like a primer for us getting into how the story is going to operate and helping us to think visually, which is pretty cool. I was surprised when the picture of the woman turned on her back was clearly the right perspective, but I wasn’t surprised by the final image of the man holding the child’s hand.

I kind of feel like Raku is not addressing that last blog entry to his wife, but to his child. And I also wonder if this child was the same kid from the prologue? I guess we’ll find out! ||

[real marten]

Ch 2 “The Smudged Room”
|| I was wondering all along if the name Yuta was somehow connected to Yuki & Haruto, and if he was the baby from the first story. I even tried to make Raku fit into it somehow, so that part didn’t really surprise me much. I totally didn’t see that Naomi was going to be the grandmother, though I figured she was a stepmom.

I was a single mom for several years and seriously the worst thing possible is getting accused of child abuse by someone who barely knows you or your child. Granted the teacher does know Yuta, but still that was a really huge jump to make, and that’s the trouble with trying to analyze artwork. It made me really angry with that teacher, and if I’d been Naomi, I think I would’ve pulled him from that school.

But it seems like Naomi has other issues going on considering she literally just stab somebody in her doorway.

Trying to put this all into a timeline and if Yuta was born in 2009, and he’s about 4 or 5 here?, which puts us at 2013/14 and Haruto made his last blog entry in 2012 (presumably before he died). Sooo, maybe the guy who just got stabbed is one of the 2 from story 1 who is trying to figure out the blog mystery?||

[real marten]

Ch 3 “The Art Teacher’s Final Drawing”
|| interesting how the teacher had such a good impression of himself, but all of his peers/students not so much. I am expecting this dude to be revealed as Naomi‘s husband.

I feel like it wouldn’t be very common for a 19 year old in Japan to just assume they would walk into a professional position, without schooling qualifications. But maybe that’s just me? Expecting this guy to have been a student of his in 1992.

Ok, art teacher’s son is 11 in 1992, so 14 in 1995, and is 6 years younger than his wife, who would be 21. Kameido is 2 years older than 19 year old Iwata, so could be Yuki. Yes!

This dude is gonna die.

Oooh Naomi! I knew you were the wife! I didn’t know you’d be the killer. Also, the newspaper guy is the one in 2015! Took him a while to catch up.

I’m most curious at this point about Haruto’s last blog entry about “knowing the sin”. Did Naomi kill Yuki during childbirth because she figured out the other murders?||

[real marten]

Ch 4 “The Bird, Safe in the Tree”
|| expecting Naomi to be this child artist, having killed her mother… but not rehabilitated lol

Well, that played out more or less as expected. Didn’t care for the subplot with Naomi and Toyokawa. Ick.

Also not sure that I’m overjoyed with the messaging around motherhood, but clearly some generational trauma here. Kind of surprised that Yuki would not have fought harder to deliver in different circumstances, considering her suspicions. Feels like she just sort of gave up.

Kind of convenient that the guy from the first story ends up being hospitalized in the same room with Kumai too, but it was a good way to wrap it all up and get Yuta’s situation cleared up plotwise||

Finished!

[candid owl]

/Since you finished
|| you're so smart lemondrop! You instantly connected the dots while some of us were blindly pawing around in the dark||

[real marten]

||Not that smart - I added 6 to 14 to make 21 cuz I want Kameido to be Yuki so badly lol||

[lethal gale]

Joining this!

[lethal gale]

1. I didn't know about this book until my great aunt gifted me it! It seems like a really intresting book.
2. I have seen some Japanese horror movies and they are one of the best horror movies I've seen.

[lethal gale]

I finished this 2 days ago and totally forgot to write down my thoughts throughout because I was so invested. I almost read this in one sitting.
|| I really like how everything and everyone was woven together so good! Though, because of that the first 2 chapters had me so invested and wrecking my brain, I was maybe expecting a crazier end. Also because my mom read this before I did and she was really enthusiastic about it, so I kinda set my expectations too high. I don't really have anything else to add besides that even though I had higher expectations, it was still a very good book and thought through so well! Plus the drawings had me wrecking my brain. I really like when books get you thinking. This was a 4,5 for me ||

[agile sky]

Finally got my copy! Started today.

[agile sky]

Chapter 1 ||I agree with Sasaki. It does all seem far-fetched. How would someone be able to infer that she committed a sin and that her death was intentional from those pictures? She could have just as easily been having (accurate) anxieties about dying in childbirth. And why delete all the posts about the child? ||

[scarlet solstice]

Starting this soon!

[agile sky]

Finished. Like others, I got through this in a single go. ||It was satisfying the way all the stories connected at the end. But it wasn't a mystery in the way where the reader would have any hope of piecing together clues themselves. Not that I ever try, but I feel in this case we weren't given a chance.||

||Ah, but not impossible to piece together, as I now see others in this thread did so, haha||

[candid owl]

I don't understand how some of them instantly connected the dots. Must work on different bravewaves than us mere book minions

[iron sleet]

i was going to join this but the library hold would be 7 weeks & the kobo ebook is full price

unless i pay full price for the physical/ebook but thats scary

[iron sleet]

maybe i should trust the good reviews and spend the money

[scarlet solstice]

midway through ch. 1 and... unsure how I feel about it

[scarlet solstice]

I am

I don't want to be a hater but ||I have so much trouble enjoying JP and KR translations lately. Is it the way dialogue feels a little short simplified? I don't think it translates well into English most of the time and I have a really hard time with it.|| HOWEVER
||chapter one was short and sweet and creepy-pasta and I'm ALL for it.|| A few notes
Page 34: ||Did we really need a diagram of the "gap" between posts? I understand this book is really going for the "show don't tell" aspect but all the diagrams feel a little unnecessary ||
Page 45: ||objects may be closer than they appear ahhh post||
Page 55: ||"It all seemed so farfetched." - you know what, YES, but I'm going to suspend my disbelief because I like creepy blogs and pictures ||

I have decided to enjoy this and DAMN IT I will.

[scarlet solstice]

Ch. 2: Children are scary
Page 74: ||The heavy breathing being heard inside the lift as he's SPRINTING up the stairs holy crap||

[slate nebula]

Alex, I think you meant to put the text behind spoilers and not the page number

[scarlet solstice]

you saw nothing, I'm sorry

[scarlet solstice]

Ch. 2: ||You know what, I appreciate a schematic.|| Pg. 84: ||I don't buy all of this recollection of children's interpretations. I don't think I would have taken a second look at the creepy drawing by the kid tbh|| Pg 92: || that jump to conclusions is so sudden... "oh she must abuse him" ???|| Pg. 98 and 102: ||As expected, they're connected and both mom and kid are creepy as hell I'm glad these are not just unrelated short stories; I feel like that is what bothers me most about Japanese reads I've done in the past: they end up being collections instead of actual novels || Pg 105: ||Ohhhhh it's the old lady.||

||That ending was intriguing... but also, I'm having such a hard time understanding what's going on and suspending my disbelief ||

[candid owl]

the kobo store is funny to me, since I'm neither UK or US, I often get offered multiple ebook editions?
I have 2 different Strange Pictures I can buy. One is basically 17USD and the other is 10USD

😂 so make sure you search the store yourself to double check prices (incase you used google or got a url sent to a specific book page)

also if you're considering ebooks, it might be cheaper to invest in an international library card somewhere to have on libby?
I know some of the US ones are fairly cheap for a years subscription for their library card

[iron sleet]

i'm using two of my american friends libbys. but yes, i could also look at paying for one of the big ones.. i just wouldn't know where to start

[iron sleet]

ill check this now

pretty sure there isn't another edition available.

https://tenor.com/view/mr-krabs-spongebob-sbso-sbsp-wacky-gif-10150404673915756358

[scarlet solstice]

Ch. 3: ||enjoyed this the most so far! I think the usage of pictures was a little useless in some pages, such as the diagrams that kept kinda repeating themselves. Also, trying to keep track of who everyone is and how characters are connected from chapter to chapter. I wonder if there is a satisfying ending to this...||

[late mural]

spontaneously joining this because it sounds intriguing!

1. I like me a good Japanese mystery/horror/thriller!
2. I liked the books by Ryu Murakami I read - "Audition" and "In The Miso Soup". As far as I remember, "Audition" had more gore and "In The Miso Soup" had more we live in a society kind of horror. And I liked "Battle Royale" which has horror/gore aspects. And, honorable mention, I mostly enjoyed Uzumaki but have not read anything else by Junji Ito. I am not into horror movies or games in general so I have no ideas what exists in that department

[late mural]

Prologue
|| I dont know anything about art therapy and the like but some of that feels a little far-fetched. But maybe thats just me? ||
Ch 1
|| I like the way pictures are used in here, and I like that I figured out along with Sasaki what was going on.
I honestly think the correct picture of 1-3 combined was pretty creepy.
but I do wonder how all that worked out, if one nurse, midwife or doctor wants to kill a patient, that doesnt seem that easy for a healthy patient? I mean, one of them would have said "breech baby? caesarian, instantly!", it would need a whole team to make sure the patient actually dies, and this team would have to work the shift in which the baby comes which can not be planned since it isnt a caesarian. And then all the documentation and explaining why you wouldnt do a caesarian on a breech baby. try explaining that to the night shift!
so idk I guess what I am trying to say: if someone wanted to kill Yuki there would have been an easier way. ||

[late mural]

Ch 2
|| there is something with the style of the book that is really creepy to me. And I like how the pictures are involved.
I didnt expect that connection, I thought it was just short stories, but I like having a connection between them all.
And okay so Yuki is the daughter-in-law of Naomi, and she died (and Naomi didnt like her), Naomi is the third person from the blog. I wonder why Naomi says she is the mother of Yuta. Just saying the grandmother takes care of a child when both his parents have died, and she already lived with the parents isnt too strange? So why go to the length of using makeup to appear younger and lying to one of the preschool teachers?
And wtf was up with that man in the end? Why was Naomi able to kill someone so easily? (probably kill, but at least attack with the intend to kill)? Why did he follow her? Questions questions ||

[late mural]

Page 129
|| I know its tragic and brutal and all but the little diagram with food in the stomach and how it doesnt get digested when someone dies made me giggle 🙈 the halo and the xes for eyes ||

[scarlet solstice]

Big , ||this diagram made me giggle||

[late mural]

Ch 3
|| ok I just thought I got it but then I am confused 🙈 lets see.
Yuki is, in 1992 and 1995, a student. Probablymaybe in love with her teacher, Miura. Miura has a wife (Naomi?) and a son (Haruto). "Nobody should get between Harutos and Naomi". Naomi killed her own husband, and later Iwata because she was scared of being found out? And then later.. Yuki marries Haruto, she lives with him and Naomi (who is alone after the death of Miura) and then dies during birth.
timeline-wise: Naomi is in her 60s in 2015, so she was in her 40s in 1995, Haruto could be between 0-20 but probably not a small child anymore. Haruto is also 6 years younger than Yuki (wrote that in his blog).

So wtf is going on with Naomi??? Killing her own husband because.. what was going on there? And with Ch 2, too.. something feels off. It doesnt feel like she did abuse her grandchild but idk, something is not right here...?
Still not 100% sure she killed Miura I am confused but then I am too tired to continue reading so.. tomorrow I hope to find out more||

[late mural]

|| ohh you got the timeline so much better than me!, I guess I am really tired :D ||

[real marten]

||I forced the math to make it work. Also that baby was like a week overdue if she was 4 weeks pregnant on 12/25 lol!||

[late mural]

finished!
|| I liked that the last chapter connected all the dots, I suspected most of that. There are still some questions I have, like why didnt Yuki try to fight more?, if she figured out Naomi was trying to kill her, why would that get better even if she survived the birth? Was her plan to just leave her child with a murderer?
Some of the picture-storylines that were clues (what Yuki drew, and the pictures of the mountain) seemed a bit convoluted. Made me think of Detective Conan, where people who are about to die manage to think about elaborate plans in their last seconds which.. idk I guess some people might be able to do that?
Somehow, the end and how everything played out felt a little disappointing, maybe I expected more. And it seemed so weird that the psychologist read so much into a drawing of a child and then later thought "oh damn I made the wrong interpretation" but tbh you can read tons into a picture like that? maybe she just draws trees this way, wanted her bird involved, and forgot to draw a door. Or the door is on the other side of the house. idk that picture can say anything.
But then, I really enjoyed Ch 1-3. I read the book in the evening and was alone at home and I was honestly so scared. I almost expected a jumpscare in Ch 1 because the drawing of the young woman was so scary and I wondered what might happen when they all are put together. And Yutas drawing and wondering what was going on there was sooo creepy, too. The scene where Naomi was followed by strange-guy had my heart beating fast. And I was scared of Iwaka alone at the mountain top, too (and that was reasonable). It has been a while since a book made me feel so scared and that is a good thing. I am not someone who tries to figure out riddles herself, so I discovered everything about the pictures with the characters. ||

|| There were a few twists and turns that really surprised me - that Naomi was older than we first thought; what the first pictures lead to, the twist of the murders on the mountain.
But the longer I thought about some of those twists, the more I thought "huh, does that make sense?", like what I said above, why did Yuki just go along with that without a fight?, how did Hisui manage to think of an elaborate plan like that while he was beaten to death?, what if Naomi didnt stab the intruder in the end (that plan seemed so wonky)? Why would this reporter then be able to adopt Yuta? Is that possible? When he is that old and has a 50/50 chance of being dead soon because of cancer and is not related to the boy? Why did Haru think that killing himself and leaving his only child in the care of a serial killer would be the best idea? Like.. what in his character made him think that is the best idea?

idk! But I liked the way the book made me feel when I dont think about it for too long (and maybe I am forgetting things here so maybe some of those arent really plot holes). Overall I liked the concept with the pictures and I guess 3.5 ⭐ ||

[scarlet solstice]

The Final Chapter, page 188: ||damn her mother is a cold-hearted bitch wew. I need to look up a character guide for who is who in this ||

Page 190: || ||

[scarlet solstice]

Page 209: ||Can I read a single Japanese novel with sexual assault casually thrown into the plot ||

[scarlet solstice]

Page 224: ||I'm sorry, I just can't buy it Yuki thought her mother in law was trying to murder her and her unborn child and she... drew some cryptic shit?? I was fully hoping for a paranormal angle or something but this is just so simplistic. The "incredible twist" so far is not a twist at all, rather something you could sense from the second chapter onwards imo. Super disappointed. This had so much creepy potential ||

Finished, uff. I'm disappointed

**Final Thoughts 🖼️ 🔪 **

Where do I start with this one? I feel like my interest and suspension of disbelief could only take so much.

||I keep going back to Japanese translations and I keep getting stuck with the same problem: there's an over-simplification of characters, plot, dialogue, descriptions and overall feel to these books. The premise was interesting and I was hooked for the first chapters as I could not quite piece together who was who in the story, and how the characters were connected. By the last 2 chapters, I was thoroughly bored and I felt like the only novelty was the pictures/diagrams...||

||I wanted to like this one so bad but it was disappointing sad I didn't vibe with it.|| 2.5 ..

[slate nebula]

I felt that the Final Chapter ||took a too melodramatic turn for my taste. It definitely lowered my rating of the book overall. I enjoyed the idea and the use of pictures and I look forward to trying Strange Houses that's coming out in June.||

[scarlet solstice]

not sure if I'm willing to give the second book a try! we'll see

[real marten]

@scarlet solstice @late mural I agree with both of you! The concept is great, but a lot of the character choices were really implausible and unrealistic to me (but maybe that’s because of my POV as an outsider to Japanese culture?)

[scarlet solstice]

I feel like this could be the main issue fod me as well

[real marten]

I’d never really read much of anything from Japanese authors before joining this server, and I often feel a disconnect

[late mural]

Yep, maybe! It is just so hard to me to imagine that in any culture, || a pregnant woman who really wants to have that child, is looking forward to it; would rather die and give that child to her mother-in-law-possibly-murderer, without a fight 🙈 ||

[real marten]

That bothered me a lot too!

[late mural]

I think it might have fit better if || Yuki somehow poisoned herself because she actually didnt want to have a child. Her husband was so looking forward to it and she went along but just couldnt do it anymore. And then she left that message in the end to tell him what she did. I was kinda waiting for a twist like that while reading||

[real marten]

||it really bothered me that the author was so cavalier with motherhood for both characters ||

[candid owl]

|| I don't know, I mean. I think the original mystery is a little far fetched. It makes more sense that Yuki were just getting really bad vibes off her MIL but didn't REALLY believe she would do something actually evil.

Otherwise, I'll just have to give it to the fact the japanese care very much about reputation and a single mom would be disgraceful so she just stuck it out hoping she was being paranoid? ||

[late mural]

Conpletely off topic but I didnt know the word "cavalier" in that context and googled it. had a laugh; I had to imagine the first meaning in that context:D

[real marten]

Sorry? lol

[late mural]

|| but I agree, it felt a bit strange ||

[real marten]

||I think there’s something there too about reputation, but it still bothered me that she wouldn’t try to fight harder to be with her family. It seems like she should have known about breeched babies in this century. I mean, I get it, the author needed her to die to make the mystery work, but it still really upset me as a mom||

[calm oriole]

Starting this

[scarlet solstice]

excited to see what you think

[calm oriole]

Prologue ||Ok I can see now why there wasn’t an audiobook for this one lol||

Interesting so far ||I love psychology but it’s like it simultaneously doesn’t make any sense to me and so obvious|| I am going into this pretty blind

[iron sleet]

i just got a copy of this

spooky

[scarlet solstice]

Yes, agreed
I also think this blurb/book really gives "YouTube creepypasta" vibes so it matches lmao

[late mural]

I just looked at their Youtube channel and idk what I expected, I dont speak Japanese, so it is all just very confusing. Maybe it is even confusing for people who do speak Japanese. Who knows.

[calm oriole]

Ch 1 ||Ok that was interesting. Idk if I really agree about the third person living with them, but I see the logic. If so, wouldn’t that be a natural suspect for who was trying to harm Yuki?||

[iron sleet]

i have a week to read this (marking for myself)

[rich acorn]

I’ll be starting this soon! My hold’s here

[iron sleet]

page 17
||’the latest post was displayed beneath the title. it was dated 28th november 2012. so, about a year and a half old. meaning the blog hadn’t been updated since then’

does the author think we’re all stupid? ||

||why is everything being over explained? ||

up to page 33
||i am clueless but content||

[candid owl]

|| Kauli you just complained it was over explained and the author treated us as stupid! || /lh

[calm oriole]

Explaining the wrong things! lol

[iron sleet]

i’m truly confused

did i not make sense or are you being silly

i meant that ||it feels like the author thinks we’re stupid, and can’t figure out anything for ourselves so he’s over explaining everything ||

maybe he was right (me)

because ||im still confused||

[calm oriole]

Things can be overly-explained and also confusing, I’m with you

[iron sleet]

yeah it’s just

odd things that are being over explained

like yes i know that if a ||blog hasn’t been updated in a year and a half.. it hasn’t been updated in a year and a half ||

blaah whatever i’m usually quite dumb when it comes to mysteries

[jolly hatch]

blaah whatever i’m
usually quite dumb when it
comes to mysteries

- kauli

[iron sleet]

HAIKU

[candid owl]

haha

The beginning did feel like they were hand holding us in figuring out the puzzle.
I personally didn't connect some dots in the later chapters, and it baffles me the ones that instantly did connect them and figured the whole thing out

like training wheels

[iron sleet]

i’m awful with books like this so we’ll see

at least it’s easy to read

[candid owl]

I am looking forward to your reactions

[iron sleet]

i don’t know how much i’ll be sharing because i usually get embarassed about how awful my predictions are lols, but i’ll try

chapter one
||not sure if i’m enjoying it yet— at the very least it’s easy to read! i have some semblance of a prediction but im not going to share it yet incase im super wrong i do like the mixed media though. ||

[candid owl]

If you're not comfortable, that is okay. But I don't think anyone will look down on you even IF they're bad predictions.

Personally, I don't think there is such a thing as an awful one, it only reveals that we see different parts of a story, and sometiems that is colored by your reading experience.

I mostly read fantasy and sci-fi, so my go-to theory on EVERYTHING seem to be supernatural related

[iron sleet]

||am i going insane? would the natural suspect not be the apparent third person who could also be a midwife & sabotage yukis pregnancy/birth with bad advice at home because they feel safe with them? ||

my brain isn’t big enough for this

but also i’m wondering if some parts of this will feel odd because i don’t know too much about japanese culture/customs

[candid owl]

hmm, it didn't have too big of an culture aspect to it imo.
Reputation matters a lot in Japan, they're also very old-fashioned and have some strict gender roles. You get to see a little bit of that. Showing respect to someone older, or to the ones that have gotten you a job is very important.

But, in this book, it wasn't a strong element, it can easily be disregarded as personality traits.

[iron sleet]

||also i think the last picture of the man & child together is quite sad ||

||unless it’s evil ||

[calm oriole]

I do feel like it’s reaching you to look for details at first, I like the training wheels analogy

[iron sleet]

ch2 ||i know im looking into things too much when my brain thinks its important that someone was described as a 'veteran midwife' in chapter 1 & someone was described as a 'veteran at the nursery school' in chapter 2 ||

my brain loves to link unimportant things

https://tenor.com/view/cat-gif-27126366

[iron sleet]

pg 92
||bitch what
this kid draws a triangle so you think his mothers abusing him?||
i am truly in the trenches here

[candid owl]

Pictured: Me, scolding Kauli, for disrespecting her intellect

[iron sleet]

YAHOO I FINALLY GUESSED SOMETHING RIGHT

YAHOO I MIGHTVE AGAIN?

pg 105
||why are we yuki-haters||

pg 107
||EXCUSE ME? WHY ARE WE INVITING PEOPLE IN TO OUR HOMES AND STABBING THEM||

||that is absolutely not the best course of action||

chapter 2
||okay. what :D first of all, i am still flabbergasted that this teacher went, 'this kid drew a triangle? this must be related to how his mother scolded him once about a stencilled ruler! his mother must be abusing him!!' stfu very much struggling to suspend my disbelief with this bs. however i do love linked stories so i'm happy to continue also curious about why naomi (grandmother) is so hesitant to call the police; wondering if it's to do with the pictures from chapter one, with her pulling yuta out of yukis corpse? maybe she gave birth at home and something went wrong? MAYBE NAOMIS JUST WEIRD? she also hated yuki? why are we yuki haters ||

my brain is not quite

comprehending

words today

||also why did she purposefully bury him so far away from yuki? what happened in the deleted blog posts ||

||why are the girls fighting ||

||ALSO SORRY, forgot the most important part; why are we stabbing people? ||

[iron sleet]

pg 130
||hit with a rock two hundred times? this person must have arm muscles the size of my entire body||

pg 131
my god this made me GIGGLE

i dont know why

[candid owl]

we obviously needed that drawn out right, no way to understand it without the drawing /j

[iron sleet]

pg 156
||miss yuki i missed you||

pg 176
||ms naomi you are FERAL||

get a grip

pg 180

chapter three
||sir why would you ever hike the exact same route as man who was murdered following his exact schedule, on the anniversary of said murder, and then tell one of the former murder suspects. ||

[scarlet solstice]

The use ||of "Strange pictures" was just... very silly at times for me.||

[iron sleet]

@scarlet solstice like this?

[scarlet solstice]

yes, absolutely made me giggle

[iron sleet]

i finished

||cant believe my first prediction about the third house member being a midwife and killing yuki was correct LMAO||

||overall, i found this book painfully average, which is a real shame :( it has many things i love; mixed media*, interconnected stories, different perspectives and more, it just fell so flat for me. every single action or thought process was over-explained, every single deduction was over-explained AND don't even get me started on the teacher who thought 'this kid drew a triangle?? his mother must be abusing him!!' honestly still shocked about that. i think it's a very cool idea but the execution was just meh.
the character of naomi was way too cartoonish for me towards the end & i'm personally sick of the 'maternal instinct murderer' 'plot twists'
OH and toyokawa? where the fuck did that behaviour come from? (saw naomi murder her husband, used it as blackmail in exchange for sex) it was so abrupt and out of left field?? and he wanted the child to see? why? to upset her? what? it was so poorly developed and just felt chucked in for the 'gasp'.

also this for chapter three. sigh.
'sir why would you ever hike the exact same route as man who was murdered following his exact schedule, on the anniversary of said murder, and then tell one of the former murder suspects. '
also this for chapter three. sigh.

the ending also felt rushed, with all the different perspectives AND THEN the student from the start coming back at the end, i didnt care at all i wish the reporter was talked about more previously, it would've had a bigger impact when he was stabbed & then began looking after yuta||

*||also don't get me started on the poor use of mixed media, could've been so much cooler. wish the pictures were more important like in chapter one. EVEN THOUGH YUKI DOING THAT WAS WEIRD.

okay i think i like this book a lot less than i originally thought||

not well structured, just getting my thoughts out ^^

no structure at all actually

pure vibes

[candid owl]

SEE!

[iron sleet]

okay a concise rev here
probs missing some points, see my rants above if you want more LMAO
||Naur. Very disappointing. I enjoyed the interconnected stories at first, but towards the end they fell flat and became uninteresting to me. It was still an easy & quick read, but I don't think it was anything marvellous. Wish the mixed media was used more & had a bigger impact on the overall story rather than the individual plots. Also disliked the constant 'analyses' of the children's drawings, like be fucking for real, you don't know shit.

• Most of the characters were super cartoonish towards the end (Yuki, Toyokawa) except Haruto, I enjoyed his brief presence, that man went through so much.
• Throwback to when we had the 'This kid drew a triangle? His mother must be abusing him' moment.

I don't want to sound like I hate it, because it kept me interested enough to finish in pretty much one sitting & I wasn't bored. It just could've done so much more.||

[iron sleet]

massive brain

||oh also, the characters decisions? wild throughout the whole book||

[candid owl]

hmmm, || the blackmail-for-sex thing made a little sense to me. This guy obviously had a superiority complex in high school, he's been looking down at his rival the entire time. And then he gets snubbed by his crush. That was a huge blow to his ego. And then, this terrible artist that doesn't know SHIT ends up rescuing him and getting him a job when he struggled, putting him in a position of seniority making him scrape and bow to a man he really did not respect. And then he discovers that this woman who got away doesn't even like her husband that much? (aka she murdered him) and she STILL doesn't want him?

Yeah, that's ego blow after ego blow, he was an obnoxious person. A small person. So when he could finally get revenge, he relished it. And letting the kid see was just the final cherry on top. He had properly soiled Naomi, ruined her honor, and even revealed her disgrace to her son - the only family she had left

It just felt like he got angry about it as a teenager, and it just grew and grew and grew until it had poisoned his entire personality

And Naomi was just fucked up from the beginning. So her actions doesnt need to make sense imo||

[iron sleet]

||understandable, i get your points. his behaviour was just way too rushed and under-developed for my liking, which the author did to make it 'shocking' after we believe he's innocent (also him also going to murder her husband and then being like mwahahaha? too cartoony for me). and i liked how naomi's behaviour was displayed right up until the very last section, then too much logic went out the window for me. ||

i don't know something just did not work for me. sucks i guess

also im sorry but this is not a horror book?

[candid owl]

I do agree with those points lol

[iron sleet]

ALSO i just saw this?

some people really did not enjoy this

LMAO

[scarlet solstice]

HELP LMAO

[calm oriole]

32% Reading this book is the epitome of that feeling of: I don’t know enough to contradict you, but that can’t be right

[iron sleet]

i hope you enjoy tink

[calm oriole]

||Lady can you please just call the police instead of psychoanalysis a drawing?!?||

Oh nm ||that’s the teacher||

Sorry this is ch 2

[calm oriole]

End of ch 2 ||This book is like a mad libs of the most insane reactions ever to perfectly normal events. Who behaves like this?!? I love it, give me 12 just like it||

Ch 3 ||In Japan, do you not know what kind of job you’re interviewing for? Surely before you accept the job you should have some idea right?||

[calm oriole]

Jfc ||the digestion illustration 😇 ||

[calm oriole]

Ch 3 ||One suspect throwing suspicion at another suspect: immediately suspicious||

[calm oriole]

Finished ||and I did like that. The way it all came together at the end was cool. I just assumed that the story started at the end, the prologue with the little girl, but the fact that it actually was the start was a clever subversion of expectations.

The kid that we follow as he reads the blog was the one in the hospital. Did he break his own leg to get in and talk to the reporter? Wow on a scale of 1-10 how badly do you want to solve that random internet mystery?

Reading the author note at the end, I feel like I just stumbled into a cult 4.25||

[agile sky]

I agree that ||the explanations of the picture got convoluted. It seemed like a lot to read into pictures, and that the story relied too much on its own explanations for things to make sense, rather than for at least a few of the dots to connect naturally on their own. ||

[rich acorn]

Starting this!

Prologue ||seems promising! I like the analysis of each little part of the picture like it makes stuff interesting though I’m not sure how much I agree with the interpretations? ||

Ch.1
||Okay this is definitely getting more interesting! I wish the pictures were coloured though, idk if they are in other versions but my ebook’s all b&w||

||Wait, did it just end on a cliffhanger?? I want to know mooore ||

Ch.2
||Okay this is bad choice of a book for when I’m trying to sleep I’m loving this and it’s quite thrilling ||

||Okay, I can’t be the only one thinking a 6-year old smudging up a drawing to not be a big deal? like have you ever worked with kids? Messy smudgy drawings are their thing and it’s rare finding kids who don’t smudge stuff up. Or idk at least the image appears to be the kid either unsuccessfully erasing or he just wanted to mark the space he lives and then decided to fill in with other sections or something ||

||Okay so basically what I just said lol but yeah, couldn’t he have drawn his mum and him on the top floor and decided to erase it all||

||This is scary ||

||Okay, the explanation’s quite something. I like that Naomi separates her feelings for Yuki from those she has for Yuta and is actually doing her best as a mum. What of the stranger following? ||

||Whaaaaa- okayy, that doesn’t explain why she tried to separate Yuki from Haruto though, I mean I could understand as ex-wife but a daughter in law? ||

||Seriously creepy stories with unexplained endings but I’m loving them ||

||I like how we can see the stories all connecting together||

[rich acorn]

||I thought it could be Haruto’s mum because of that drawing of an old lady and for Haruto to be so trusting of her ||

||I’m thinking if Yuki was the girl in the Prologue story just to connect it all so far||

Ch.3
||200 friggin TIMES? WDYM
Was this murderer some gym buff or something like howwww? And how does one figure how many times a body completely disfigured got hit?||

[candid owl]

||1. I'd assume adrenaline. We hear about people lifting cars with that yknow
2. I assume because there were indications of the size of the rock, or maybe the rock was there, and they did a rough estimate at how many times it would need to be smashed into the face to cause the damage it did||

[rich acorn]

Finished this last night. I’ll share my thoughts on this later (I’m just very low and not in a state of expressing myself coherently)

[willow pivot]

1. Saw people in the server talk about it so I got curious 😉
2. Not really tbh

[willow pivot]

Prologue: ||Honestly that is a lot of hints to see in a child's drawing.. not sure I would've seen all of that, or concluded those things. Maybe some things seem a bit far fetched for me personally||

[willow pivot]

Ch 1: ||Hm interesting title for a blog.. doesn't seem to be a very engaging blog though, imo. Kenta doesn't seem much of a writer 😬 And suddenly it stops.
What did you do Yuki?
Concluding by the amount of pie pieces there was a 3rd person in the house, creative who could it be, family member? Midwife?
Somehow I feel like Yuki wanted a c-section for the baby, but wasn't allowed to for some reason, cause it had to be "natural"? Who didn't allow it, Kenta? The midwife?
Nice puzzling with the numbers on the drawings. Did Yuki draw her fears, or did she know all this would happen and she wanted to leave 'proof'..||

[willow pivot]

Ch 2: ||Who is the creep following Naomi and Yuta and why..
Where did Yuta go.. was he kidnapped?
Hm why is their apartment stained in the drawing. But yeah it's a kid, they smudge things, doesn't have to be a big deal 😂 but yeah it probably is.
Wait HOW do you go from: oh he drew a triangle > looks like one of those rulers > HIS MOTHER IS ABUSING HIM!1!! That's a little far fetched don't you think???
The 'ruler' was the start of a tombstone, interesting. So he went to the cemetery to visit his biological mother.. wait is it Yuki? Poor kid, his dad also died before he could explain him things, and now he's also scared of asking his mom, unfair..
Oh not his mom, his grandma! Hmmm I was suspecting step mom, but ok!
HOLD ON, why are you stabbing this man?? Wtf woman!||

[willow pivot]

Ch 3: ||Ok so nobody actually really seemed to like Miura? Students, wife and not even his friend
200 wounds, that's brutal! How did they came up with that number though. I bet in this state 100 would've looked just the same
Why does his drawing of the mountains looks so different from the other drawings he made. Something doesn't add up there..
Ah so Toyokawa is gone and now Kameido is teaching the class, coincidence? And was she more than a student to Miura? Oh she loved him, ok then! Aaaand she's Yuki
Ok so it was not possible for Miura to draw the view at that hour. But tbf he'd been there so many times, he would know it by heart..
Kameido was the only one (besides Toyokawa) who knew he'd be up there at that moment, did she do it? Oooh it's the wife! Oh no! And Toyokawa dead too? Did he do it himself or is the wife responsible for that (and that note) aswell? Is that also the reason why she stabbed the man, who we now know is Kumai, to get rid of all the people who knew??||

[hallow kite]

Prologue: ||I was going to ask how she knew Little A was abused but if the smudged mouth does indicate that she found it difficult to smile and that's why then that's good analysis, but it could easily be for another reason. I'm not sure if she's spot on at all or is she's totally reading into things with the drawing.||

Chapter 1: ||I think all the additional media like the drawings and blog posts are super interesting. I love when things like that are in a book as they really add to a story for me. ||

||Why do I feel like something bad is going to happen with the birth of this baby? ||

||Of course it did. Yuki died giving birth. I don't think her anxieties surrounding the birth played into it but maybe it was a little bit of foreshadowing for her on what was going to happen. ||

||I think this is going to be one of those books where I'm along for the ride rather than actively trying to solve the mystery.||

||Wait, if she predicted her own death then that's equally really cool and absolutely heartbreaking that she just accepted what was going to happen to her.||

[willow pivot]

Ch 4: ||So I guess Naomi had a terrible childhood too.. and she's the psycho kid from the first drawing we saw! Her mom is a b*tch! Woman, not the bird! Wow..
Revenge is such a strange reason to have a baby?
Miura is an ass to his kid.. but is this a reason to kill him? Course not, but I guess that's what Naomi knows works?
Oh hey Kumai is still alive! Poor man is feeling guilty though.
Hm not sure I agree with Naomi that Miura made the drawing to save her.. but who knows.
Yuki used to be Takeshi's babysitter? Eww, lol.. I wonder if she started this relationship on purpose, cause he reminded her of his dad?
Toyokawa is a terrible man.
Naomi you psycho woman! You want to be the baby's mom cause you don't want to be seen as old? The hell.. And if Yuki suspected her plans all along, why didn't she fight a bit harder in stead of leaving some puzzling drawings?
And I guess Kenta's last blog post was dedicated to his mother, not Yuki. And now we also know about the title, at least that's clever.||

Finished: ||I don't know if I really enjoyed this. I was very curious about the book, it seemed like a very interesting concept. But in the end to me it feels like the execution wasn't fully there.
I think a lot of conclusions drawn from the drawings were quite far fetched. I mean, it's all personal interpretation isn't it, like it always is with art. The psychologist from the prologue even questions her own conclusions in the final chapter, while she seems so sure before. Also the teacher immediately thinking Naomi abused Yuta because of a smudged out triangle is wild to me.
When I started the 2nd chapter I almost thought it was a different story than the first chapter, but I'm glad they all were connected after all. I would've felt quite unsatisfied if these were separate short stories. Halfway I actually got a bit bored with the book, but kept reading to see if things would get better. I think they did a bit. But hey, at least I got out of my comfort zone and tried!||

[hallow kite]

Chapter 2: ||Oh, so is every chapter a different mystery to figure out featuring drawings? ||

||I do think people in this book are jumping to conclusions way too quickly when it comes to smudged drawings. I don't get what the significance is but there must be some sort of message if it's happened in both chapters so far.||

||Wait, the kid in this is Yuki's kid and he has two moms because his birth mom died (Yuki) and he was then raised by someone else? I do like how they are connected and I wasn't expecting it but now I'm wondering if the blog is going to factor in further and if we need to go back to find more clues. This is so creepy overall though and I'm really enjoying it so far.||

[hallow kite]

Chapter 3: ||Time B is a really long time to have an alibi for tbh so I'm not surprised that they think anyone who does have an alibi for that entire time is lying and likely to be the murderer. I don't think saying something like 'I was home sleeping' would cut it normally.||

||The body having over 200 injuries points to it being done by someone who didn't like the victim, unless that was on purpose and to try and pin the murder on someone else ||

||Ooh, the forcefeeding of the food to botch the time of death and mislead investigators is a clever trick. Not clever enough that it went unnoticed but still pretty clever compared to what an ordinary murderer would do.||

||I love how the end of these chapters are pretty dark with the murders ||

[iron sleet]

[hallow kite]

kauli idk what that's meant to mean

[iron sleet]

-# (nothing, i just felt like letting you know i was reading your updates )

[slender kraken]

I'm happy do a small extension if anyone needs it

I'm running late myself because I'm enjoying The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter but dat shit is slow

[hallow kite]

Chapter 4: ||Oh my god that is such a brutal murder. Imagine basically stomping on someone's stomach and then their neck??? That must have been awful for her to experience.||

||Are we sure that she has maternal love buried deep when that's what she did to her mom?||

||I don't think it's a parent's duty to abuse their kid but okay. Her husband sounds like an absolute asshole for that. If Naomi was capable of a horrible crime when she was 11 after suspected abuse then it wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility for her kid to end up the same I'm not surprised she's resorting to killing her husband in order to protect her kid but surely there are only so many murders that she can get away with. ||

||Ew at this asshole blackmailing her and trying to coerce her/force himself on her. So gross. She should probably kill him too just to protect herself I'm so sad for her that she thought she had no choice but to accept his gross proposal. I need something bad to happen to Toyokawa pronto.||

||Naomi, it's a little bit weird that you want to be the mother to your son's baby she was obviously responsible to the bad things that happened to Yuki too because she wanted her out of the way. Making her secretly overdose on salt to raise her blood pressure and put her at more risk during childbirth is so devious, and not in a good way. I can't believe she used her job to falsify records like that and put Yuki in that position. Just horrible. I could forgive her killing her abusers but not Yuki.||

||Karma got her in Haruto killing himself? That's just more death and destruction that she has on her hands tbh.||

||The fact that a student solved all this just reminds me of amateur sleuths as well which is a really fun book trope for me. This is obviously a lot darker and less humorous than most of them I read but I still really enjoyed this.||

[iron sleet]

||justice for haruto ||

[hallow kite]

Finished. ||Okay so I totally loved this one but I'm getting the feeling that's not the general consensus here? I thought it was such a breeze to get through so that might have upped my rating after struggling through my last few BRs.||

||I liked that it originally felt that the mysteries were separate but they were slowly connected and that clues for each new mystery could be found in previous ones. I thought Naomi was a really interesting character as she was both sympathetic and absolutely vile in equal measures. I do think her motivation for killing Yuki was totally lacking and she just ruined so many lives with how selfish she was, but I think it kind of made her more interesting to read about. ||

||I just really liked the concept and thought that the drawings were an interesting angle to help with solving the mysteries. I do think some of the things the characters thought were a bit out there like assuming all the kids had been abused so I'm not totally sure what to make of that. I only really have minor complaints about this and otherwise I totally loved the ride we were taken on. I'll definitely read Strange Houses when it's published in English next month. 4.5 ⭐ ||

I can feel kauli disagreeing from here

[calm oriole]

I loved it!

[candid owl]

I think most people enjoyed the experience but it could have been executed better. There were a lot of complaints and pointing of flaws but most people gave positive ratings

[iron sleet]

[candid owl]

every single one complained about ||the teacher jumping to abuse conclusions||

[iron sleet]

don't remind me !! /lh

[iron sleet]

naur i agree with most of your points.
my 'mini review' thing is p much only my negative thoughts, but i did finish it in one sitting and have a pretty decent time— i was just super disappointed because i felt it could've hit harder

the vibes weren't correct

i'm normally angrier/more upset when books disappoint me i'd rather it just be a bad experience overall n forget about it.

[willow pivot]

Haha

I didn't have the best time.. but you know, sometimes you need to get out of your comfort zone to be reminded why you usually stay in your comfort zone

[iron sleet]

it just had so many things that i love in all my stuffs; ||mixed media, interconnected stories from different perspectives/times, WEIRD CHILDREN|| but it just didnt WORK

i'm getting upset about it again
-# /lh

[slender kraken]

The last 30 pages in a cafe

Wait a goddamn minu- omg I am ass. Lemme put my thoughts down when I get home and get these points settled, my brain is literally ASS. I'm so sorry guys.

[willow pivot]

Hey don't worry

Looks like a nice setting for the last 30 pages though

[candid owl]

are you saying this because you forgot you were hosting this and it ended 3 days ago?
You never added an extension

/lh

[past stirrup]

No worries Vaude. Have you considered hosting also Strange Houses by Uketsu (coming in June) or life is too much

[slender kraken]

I'd LOVE to

[iron sleet]

ill join because its you

[slender kraken]

Finished thoughts on this one though!
I wanted this immediately after I saw it was available at Waterstones a few months ago I'd heard about Uketsu before and I'm hoping to check out the manga related to his stuff at a later date too when the translations are easier to find. I love the mixed media angle of the pictures being fully integrated into the story for the readers to see and follow along in terms of clues. In my case at least this is a really nicely made paperback and compared to my last read this book felt like I was reading on double speed.

Generally I am absolute whore for Japanese Horror / Mystery / Thrillers - DOUBLY SO when it has elements that allude to 2Channel, NicoNicoDouga and @channel creepy stories, I've been looking into Uketsu the dude more lately and his energy is absolutely up my street. If I'm honest he's living the kind of life I wish I could live. What's interesting is that apparently his favoured readers are women 30-50.
https://www.youtube.com/@uketsu

||Probably the biggest detriment I can think of in regards to how this book is presented is just that I don't speak Japanese so the translated element makes it a little bit clunky while somehow being both overexplained and oversimplified at the same time? It's something that can be seen in Japanese mystery or murder books where the answer is often laid out multiple times - I think it may just be something related to the genre so I'm a lot more forgiving about it. Sometimes it felt a little bit like the logic took MASSIVE JUMPS for no reason though? The example that everyone else seemed to notice was the whole "this child is obviously being abused" jump that the teacher did during the second story. BUT I actually really loved the element of the characters working through the mysteries surrounding their individual stories and how it connected as a whole. It feels like the author generally has a knack for coming up with these creepy but clever mysteries for the reader to solve.||

||Vibe wise, I love the setting and that particular ~2020 internet vibe with dying blogs in the first part. I think the general pace and energy makes this book really quick and fun to read. It's really reminiscent of a lot of other media that I love, the third chapter for some reason really reminded me a lot of Higurashi, I was surprised at the brutality that was put out for how our recurring killer killed her husband (though I think the descriptions of how she stomped her mother to death likely takes the cake in brutality). That being said I think I enjoyed the reveal of what the picture meant in the second story the best - A lot of online reviewers were raving about the 'twist' energy in this book but by about the half-way point I kinda guessed where we were going with this, it didn't ruin my flow though. What I'll settle on is that I found the book itself and it's conclusion satisfying in the same way that finishing a puzzle is. Plus ngl it felt kind of every time I managed to pick up on a clue before the book got to it.||

||Random thought that goes along with the satisfying feeling is that any time there was a 'lapse' in logic, a lot of the time Uketsu could reasonably smooth over my complaints - I kinda relish when an author goes over any potential snags and is able to explain it away even half-heartedly especially in mystery books. For example, the teacher drawing the mountains in stead of simply writing his wife's name was a means to remove suspicion from her to protect their son. It's not realistic but in terms of the storytelling it fits perfectly.||

I'll definitely be hosting the sequel when it comes out in a few months. With it's faults, it still massively appealed to a lot of my own personal niches so I'm happy to call it a quirky, minimalist 4.5 read.

[quiet marten]

@slender kraken,@hallow kite,@stray vault,@tiny talon,@slate nebula,@odd kraken,@candid owl,@past stirrup,@scarlet solstice,@agile sky,@coral elk,@shadow sand,@stuck wyvern,@pseudo agate,@barren dagger,@orchid shell,@rich acorn,@zinc herald,@tough swan,@sharp sphinx,@cursive lynx,@real marten,@lethal gale,@late mural,@willow pivot

Moderately late closing announcement everyone!
Thanks for joining me and I hope that you had fun with this quirky read! I'm going to host it's sequel in a few months so I hope you'll come along for that one too!

I'll be posting the finished readers in the next post, don't hesitate to ping if I miss you!

I suppose my only follow up question is:

Did you anticipate where the book was going? Did you like the format that the book had?

[candid owl]

Thanks for hosting Vaude!

I caught on to where the book was going WAY late, I didn't even clock immediately that chapter 2 and chapter 1 was connected until toward the end of it. I thought it was just short stories 😂

I DID like the format tho, I want to read more horror/mystery where you actually gotta think about the clues and have a chance of solving it yourself before the book does

[slender kraken]

Finished: Amanda, Intro, Lioness, Peridot, Spinch, Juniperleopard, Jana, Lemondrop, Sophie(crackontrack), Jac, Alex, Pauline, Kauli, Tink, Hanzy, Dees, Abi, Vaude
(holy moly you're all amazing, look at you all)

[slate nebula]

Thanks for hosting! I liked the format and I'll be reading the next book!

[jolly hatch]

Thanks for hosting! I
liked the format and I'll be
reading the next book!

- Lioness🌌

[real marten]

Thanks for hosting!!

[scarlet solstice]

Thank you for hosting, Queen of Horror

[iron sleet]

thank you for hosting vaudey

[agile sky]

Thanks for hosting!

[willow pivot]

Thanks for hosting

[past stirrup]

Thanks for hosting Vaude!

[rich acorn]

Thanks for hosting this Vaude! Sorry I never got around to sharing my final thoughts

||I just really liked this book and the way everything kinda just wrapped at the end. I liked how it kept me guessing through the whole book and like through each individual we get to know the main characters through different lens and like they seem so much like individual stories yet come to a perfect conclusion. I found the ending satisfactory and am glad that though little kid may have lost his family, he also gained someone in a way and wasn’t left off in an orphanage. I’ve given it a 4.5 (the 0.5 going down would possibly be that silly old teacher over analysing the kid’s drawing and like fine it did help the plot but )||