Reviews with content warning for Injury/Injury detail - Confessions

I am so blown away by this book that I can't even think of where to start on praising it.
Every part offered a unique perspective on the same situation with its own set of new, disturbing details. By the end, I was left with an uncomfortably complex view of what happened without any progress toward forming an opinion on it. This story lives in the gray area.

I also can't get over how satisfying this book is. Details are tied to each other in ways that are often unpredictable (at least to me), but the author gives plenty of opportunities for the reader to piece together the newest details before showing the answer. From the perspective of structure, this book is a very satisfying example of how to stitch details together.

In short: Read this!

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bugsanddirt's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Content Warnings

novi's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Diverse cast of characters? No

4.5

I didn't expect this book to be this dark. Please check all the triggers before reading.

This is a very fast paced book, you can finish it in one sitting. There are parts that could make you exhausted, and there are parts that got a little boring, but most of it is a real page turner.

What I knew about this book before reading it was that it's about a teacher talked to a group of students, saying that she knew that they're the ones that killed her child in the past, and it made these students scrambling basically. And I thought the child was the same age as these students, and they're adult now. But noooo lol a bunch of reviewers talked about synopsis differently that it made me confused.

So the setting is in the current day, in a middle school. A middle school teacher's daughter was found dead. She was 4 years old. It was said to be accident, but the teacher (the mother) then realized she was actually murdered by her own students. This book is her revenge. And it was a satisfying revenge.

But me having a vague picture about this book made my reading experience so much better and more tense, because I didn't even knew what's gonna happen and how this book was formatted so uniquely. Tbh i was a bit hesitant to pick another popular japanese murder book after Girls in the Dark, but this book has a lottt of good reviews from people i actually trust. Plus i read The Decagon House Murders and i really liked it. The reviews are right. The story telling is unique, i would say it's a bit similar with Girls in the Dark BUT the execution is so so so much better.

I said this book was about revenge, so if you like the "good for her" stories, this is for you, but i think a lot of it is also about gender roles in traditional families, dysfunctional family, and parenting. The multiple POVs in this book really shows that what's seen is not always what's real, and you get to see where and why a person behaves like this and that, and i love that.

I took half the star because i can't give 5 stars to books that made me uncomfortable like this lol i mean it's really good but it didn't give me the "omg it's sooo perfect" feeling.

Content Warnings