Sunday, January 01, 2023

2023 book 2

 Mizuki Tsujimura's Lonely Castle in the Mirror

This book centers on a Japanese middle-school student who has stopped going to school because of severe bullying; one day, the mirror in her bedroom starts glowing, and it turns out to be a portal to a mysterious fairy-tale castle, ruled by a little girl in a wolf mask, where seven middle-schoolers are told they can hang out. And oh yeah, there’s a magical key that can grant one of them a wish, if someone can find it. It took me a little while to warm up to this—I didn’t love the writing style, but I’m not sure if that’s a translation issue or not—but I was all in by the second half and sobbing buckets by the end. I will pat myself on the back for correctly guessing most (but not all) of what was up, but that didn’t make me like it any less. SOBBING BUCKETS. A/A-.

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