I had a hard time going through this book, and although it is quite short (under 300 pages), it took me a whole month to read.
The story follows two threads: on the one hand a couple of journalists are trying to learn more about the concept of ”high hostess” that they heard in the context of a scandal involving an ambassador posted in Japan, on the other hand, the police is investigating a serial bomber. Obviously, the two threads will eventually meet.
The premise is promising, and the bomber/police part of the novel managed to keep me interesting until the end. However, I found the high hostess/journalists part less engaging.
What made me lost interest in the story is mainly that the outcome and everything that unfolds is quite obvious. Even from the beginning, you can easily sense where the story is going, and unfortunately, there is not much more than that, the book simply takes the direction you expect it to take.
There are several parts were the journalists would sit down and make deductions about what is happening, but though I usually enjoy these parts in detective novels, here it was mostly leading to the obvious.
Overall, there was not much of a mystery in this novel. It was not bad at all, just not engaging enough.
About
I’m learning Japanese, Korean and Chinese to read mystery novels and play video games in these languages.
Learning languages has always been one of my favourite hobbies, but I’m not a social person, I don’t like to meet new people and make friends, this is just not me. I keep hearing that languages are meant for communication, that we have to actively use them, talk to people, etc. and for a long time, I thought I was weird to learn languages just for me, just to enjoy media, culture and entertainment in a foreign language, with absolutely zero interest in communicating with natives.
Now I don’t really care what people think, and this blog helped me a lot to stop doubting myself and just do what I enjoy doing.
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