If you want to read something pretty messed up, and in a format that felt strange to me as an American, this book is for you. Not so much for me. But I can respect the craft behind it. There was lot of digression, but it was interesting as a character study, and ultimately, a murder mystery.

After reading Confessions I knew that Kanae Minato was going to become one of my new favorite authors. So of course I jumped at that chance to read this when I saw it on Netgalley. This had that same dark and twisted feel that Confessions had.

This book follows four girls and the affect that a murder of their friend has on their lives. They were the last ones to see Emily alive and they even saw her murderer but we're unable to help police catch him. Emily's mother says something to the girls that will change their lives forever.

I was sucked in to this book from the beginning and never wanted to put it down. I would definitely recommend this book to others and I really hope that the publisher has plans to publish English translations of Kanae Minato's other work.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the galley.

Fifteen years ago, Sae, Maki, Yujo and Akiko were separated from their friend by a stranger. Not long after, their friend, Emil, was found murdered. The girls were never able to give police a specific enough description to identify the stranger that was suspected of killing Emil, and her mother, Asako, blames the girls for her daughter’s death. She curses them all and promises they will pay. Now, all these years later, the killer still hasn’t been caught, but the four girls involved that day are living with the consequences of it, still. This is a character driven mystery, not unlike Tana French’s Into the Woods