If you're unfamiliar, it's advertised as "a fresh take on horror" that incorporates drawings into a mystery that readers are supposed to "piece together. The author, Uketsu, is apparently a popular YouTuber, though I'd never heard of him before this.
The cover caught my eye at the local bookstore, and the premise sounded intriguing enough, but everything falls apart very quickly: the writing is laughably amateur, the characters have zero depth or development, and the entire story hinges on incredible coincidences ("Oh ho ho, how about that, the college student who found the blog in the first chapter happens to show up in the same hospital room as this other character investigating the murders later on to spill exposition that will help him!"), and "mic drop" moments, instances where the reader is supposed to be "shocked" at the "twist" and you can feel the author clearly jerking himself off over his own perceived cleverness. There is no mystery to solve because Uketsu makes sure to explain every single goddamned thing in the book (multiple times, no less) before you get the chance. Not that you'd have been able to anyways: the "mystery" is so contrived, and so contingent upon convenience and leaps of logic, that even a tag-team of Poirot and Benoit Blanc would've given up and found a different line of work.
I refuse to believe anyone over the age of fifteen actually found this well-written, or complex, or deep, or anything other than the heap of garbage that is. I saw a comment on Goodreads mention that Uketsu wanted this book "to appeal to people who don't read", and if we're evaluating it by that standard, then sure, this might be good if you're borderline illiterate and/or have never read anything beyond a picture book (and even then, Dr. Seuss and Richard Scarry have better prose and more depth than this bullshit).
At the very least, I now have a litmus test for whether to trust someone else's taste. What a godawful book.
by m_t_rv_s__n
5 Comments
That’s what happens when a social media following is the fastest way to a book contract. Mostly a failed experiment for film, and even tv, but it’s apparently good enough for wide release books.
Aw, I haven’t read the whole book, but I did read one of the stories (the first one, about the house) while at the bookstore and I enjoyed it… not enough to pick up the full book, but enough to add it to my library wish list the next time I’m on there.
That said, I treated the short story as more of a logic puzzle than as an actual literary story. As a big Agatha Christie fan (yay, Poirot reference), I wasn’t expecting Agatha Christie – nobody matches Agatha Christie, after all – I was just expecting to be entertained and hopefully a little spooked, and I was!
Had a similar experience. The whole book felt like reading a reddit CreepyPasta rather than an actual book (in terms both of storytelling execution and prose). I just decided one chapter in to turn my brain off and try to have fun, but the book treats you like an actual idiot and it’s hard to get past.
It is very mediocre for sure. All of the mysteries only work because they have been intricately (labouriously) constructed to justify their own existence. Their is an internal “logic” to it all that is propped up by sheer contrivance. I finished the book, but I won’t be picking up the latest Uketsu.
A pretentious poet calling people with different taste “borderline illiterate.” Of course.
You can dislike something without being rude and insulting to those that like it.
This isn’t critique, this is just being an asshole.