Thank you NetGalley and HarperVia for this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

I enjoyed most of my time with Strange Pictures. I thought it was horror going in, and while their are definitely some effectively creepy scenes, the book is really more a mystery book with an interesting style. The most apt comparison is the Ace Attorney series where the book is split into individual mysteries where characters gather clues and they all lead into each other loosely. My main problem though is that is takes everything that make an Ace Attorney game fun, the actual solving of the mysteries, and removes all of it. Every mystery is so throughly explained by the characters at every single step, and all of the mysteries are pretty easy to solve once the pieces are in place that the experience of reading this novel is one of watching someone else play and Ace Attorney game perfectly.

Further unlike the Ace Attorney games where the mysteries are fun and generally quite compelling, the 4-ish mysteries in this book are all sort of boring. There just isn't really any pizzaz to any of them. The only selling points of this book is the fact that the drawing element of the mysteries is cool and bring this a step above a version of this novel without them and the few scenes throughout the book which are very compelling written.

At the end of the day if you are looking for a short mystery novel you can knock out in a day I would recommend this book, but definitely don't go into the novel expecting horror or something ground-breaking.

Chapter 1 ("The Old Woman's Prayer") - 2/5
Two school friends start obsessing over a stranger's blog; convinced there's some hidden secret there. The setup kept me reading, just to see if it was all a conspiracy/obsession, or if the two friends really had stumbled onto a murder plot. The ending is SO abrupt, it just stops and that's it. Zero resolution for ANYTHING.

Chapter 2 ("The Smudged Room") - 1/5
This story, of a woman and her young son, moves at a very slow pace. There's a lot of over explanation of things, and there barely anything 'spooky' about it (except the parts about the stranger that keeps following our duo). It relies on a twist about the family (and this chapter links back to the first), but once again the ending is way too abrupt, and felt like it came out of nowhere.

Chapter 3 ("The Art Teacher's Final Drawing") - 2/5
This chapter centers on a murder of an art teacher, and a young reporter finds himself compelled to get at the truth in the case. Like the previous chapters, this relies on over explanation of plot points and plot twists for an effect.

Chapter 4 ("The Bird, Safe in the Tree") - 1/5
The concluding chapter attempts to connect every story in the book, finally putting all the puzzle pieces together for a final reveal. The mother character from a previous chapter is at the center of the mystery, and a large chunk of the story focuses on her family background. The rest of the story is all about an older reporter, who wants to solve the mystery that the police couldn't. The ending didn't really feel like a satisfying conclusion.

Each chapter in "Strange Pictures" forces the reader to recontextualize the previous story, to see the mystery in a new light. I was hoping the book would run with the 'mixed media' aspect WAY more, and rely on having the reader analyze clues, but that sadly wasn't a bigger focus of the book. It also didn't seem to have many 'horror' or even 'spooky' elements, feeling more like a mystery book instead.

Creepy image galore, Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak is a comparable novel to Strange Pictures, where a collection of drawings becoming an integral part of the narrative. Strange Pictures goes one steps further with observation and deduction, uncovering hidden meanings through manipulation — if Rekulak's story is a horror/thriller, Uketsu's novel is more of a horror/detective fiction. This process of 'decoding' is my favorite aspect of the reading experience, especially with the accompanied illustration/info-graphic breaking down the solution.

The plot is much more interwoven than I initially anticipated (I thought it was a collection of short stories), so definitely keep the cast in check as even the seemingly irrelevant side characters become a critical point of view later on.

While I enjoy the brain teasers, as well as the intricacy of its plot line, my biggest gripe with Strange Pictures is the writing/translation, coming across very rudimentary and stilted. Especially with a story containing darker subject matters (such as domestic abuse), they lose a lot of their intended impact, because the reader is being 'told' of things, rather than having the event described in a visceral way, or acted out by emotive, compelling characters — a little bit like reading a plot breakdown rather than the actual novel.

From a creativity stand point, Strange Pictures is worthy of checking out for its well-executed gimmick, and the surprisingly complex plot. I just wish the writing is a little bit more layered and colorful to propel it as a solid favorite.

This was such a compulsive read for me because I had a great time piecing the puzzle together, trying to solve the various mysteries! I love the mixed-media style and the fact that each of the stories are interconnected. I felt good/smart when I was able to figure something out and by the time I got to the end, it all came together wonderfully! I found myself going back a few pages to look at past clues and pictures like I was an amateur sleuth multiple times. I had so much fun reading this even as the sinister drawings and events/people creeped me out. I would have liked to see a bit more development of the characters and less repetition, but I really enjoyed this spooky whodunnit mystery overall.

I’m looking forward to diving into more from Uketsu in the future!

Strange Pictures by Uketsu is a unique book split into different stories that are all connected. When I first started reading it, I got an extremely eerie vibe, but it's more mystery than true horror. The connection between the picture and the stories is very well done, even if toward the end of the book it does get kind of repetitive. I found myself skimming the last part because there was no new information just a recap of sorts. Still, Strange Pictures is a solid Japanese mystery book with a twist.

The mysterious Uketsu, who always appears wearing a mask and using a voice changer, has become famous in Japan thanks to his “sketch mysteries.” This short book is very innovative and well plotted. It compiles a few stories that revolve around drawings. They seem loosely connected to each other, but it’s not clear how. I was intrigued and pleasantly surprised when I discovered how all the pieces fit together. It really is like a jigsaw puzzle, you get the little parts that connect craftily and form a whole. I usually struggle to enjoy Japanese mysteries because I find them too cerebral. This is not the case here. I loved how the country’s culture influences the characters and situations. Some parts that I attributed to national idiosyncrasies were actually clues. As with many foreign books, sometimes it was hard to figure out who was who based on their names. This is not the author’s fault but only my own. Still, it wasn’t hard to follow the story. Anyone looking for an original, creepy and disturbing crime novel, this is worth reading.
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, NetGalley/HarperVia.

This was a very unique kind of story. A series of pictures are at the heart of three different mysteries, with the pictures themselves containing hidden secrets. It opens with a prelude about an instructor breaking down the meaning of a child's drawing, followed by two university students finding an odd blog with a sequence of sketches, a mother being shown a somewhat disturbing drawing her son made in class, and finally a sketch found on the body of a murder victim. While the individual chapters/mysteries followed a common path found in Japanese mystery fiction, the drawings and the secrets they hold are absolutely original in their usage in the book. The deeper the story gets, the more shocking the truths to how the different chapters connect to the overall arc become, and the later pages in the book reveal amazing and euphoric surprises. An incredible mystery/thriller with touches of horror, Strange Pictures is fantastically refreshing and rewarding.

Gripping stories that weave together horror and a whodunnit-type mystery. Intriguing and easy to read - my only complaint would be that the style is a little too simplistic and makes the book read like YA, while the themes are adult. But I enjoyed this.

This was an interesting read. I enjoyed the puzzle aspect and how the stories were intertwined. Somewhere in the third story things began to feel repetitious for me personally, but overall I liked it and I would recommend.

Strange Pictures is a brilliantly-constructed puzzle of a book. I wouldn’t call it horror, exactly; it falls more in line with mystery or crime fiction. It begins with a psychologist describing how a child’s drawings can be used to determine their mental state, and from there branches out into four stories that seem unrelated at first, with the connections between them gradually becoming apparent.

Each story has a different set of characters and features a different investigation, and central to each story are drawings that reveal something important about a character or event. Uketsu encourages readers to look not just at the drawings themselves, but to consider their actual construction: what materials were used, the order in which the strokes were made. It sounds confusing, but the stories are told quite simply, while still full of intricacies, revelations, and twists and turns. Reading this felt like I was in a mental maze, with only Uketsu’s illustrations and diagrams to guide me through. My brain was working hard to forge the connections and see the clues that were right in front of me – and even when I thought I’d figured something out, I usually hadn’t.

Not only are the stories in Strange Pictures mentally stimulating and entertaining, they also invite the reader to think about artistic perspective and interpretation, and to consider how a simple picture can reveal – and hide – more than you’d expect. Thank you to HarperVia for the early reading opportunity.

I was drawn to this book because of the pictures and I am a fan of Hidden Pictures and that style. This book was a quick read and I loved not only the drawings but the visual explanations throughout the stories made it easy to follow along and hard to put down!

I love that it is 3 short stories that seem at first like they wouldn’t connect but they do! It made me want to go back and look at all of the pictures again!

Thank you NetGalley for an ARC copy of this book!

I had no idea what to expect going into this and i was hooked from the first story.

This book is by Uketsu, a Japanese YouTuber who uses an eerie voice changer and wears a creepy mask obscuring his identity. His videos are akin to creepypastas, showing viewers pictures and challenging them to uncover the hidden potentially sinister meanings behind them. This book contains nine seemingly different pictures like this that then weaves into an overarching mystery for the reader to unravel.

Strange Pictures was a very quick and fun read. You could probably finish it in a day and the way it's structured you might be compelled to. It's unnerving and exciting at the same time. I had a real good time reading and seeing the deeper complexities behind every drawing in the story.

This book would be perfect for fans of Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak, creepypasta, or mysteries in general

some VERY unusual pictures at the heart of this massively peculiar mystery in four acts: the first three each set up a scenario, one a student investigating a creepy blog with some odd pictures, one a woman and her kid's drawing of his home, and one a sleuth investigating a sketch made by a murder victim. None of the three seem to share any characters, and the only similarity is the emphasis on drawings as a tool of investigation. it's highly jumpy and quite intriguing, although I found the true plot fairly straightforward before it all finished unfolding in the fourth one. 5 stars. Tysm for the arc.

(3.5 stars rounded down) This was a short, quick read that was disturbing and mysterious and very fast-paced. It’s three separate storylines that are all connected in ways both surprising and obvious. I liked the mixed-media approach to the writing - many of the pages are taken up with illustrations related to the stories being told. I also felt at times that I was getting mini art lessons, which wasn’t unappreciated! The characters’ are pretty undeveloped, but this is a really plot-driven story, so that didn’t strike me as a detriment to the story. I was drawn into this quickly and read it in one sitting. It’s compact, surprising, and keeps your attention.

Wow, what an unexpected read! This is not at all the kind of book I would normally go for, but I was 100% enthralled and incapable of putting it down once I'd started reading. I will absolutely be ordering this, and I will recommend it to as many people as I can. It's an easy read, but it's one that you won't soon forget.

This book was something else. It really had me going with the way that everything locked into one another and how smartly everything was revealed. It was one of those books that makes you want to go back and read it a second time because having all the pieces in place gives it a different kind of enjoyment.

I honestly have no criticisms of this book. Even the villain of the story was likable and understandable in her own way. The writing was superb, the storyline flowed so perfectly, I just--yeah. I have no complaints about this book. This is quite possibly one of my most favorite reads of the year.

Thank you yo NetGalley for an ARC of Strange Pictures.

The illustrations caught my eye besides the premise. One of the many things the Japanese does well is horror so I was excited to read this.

I've never heard of the author since I'm not a fan of social media or YouTube. I guess he's like a horror Banksy.

The novella is structured around nine childlike drawings, each holding a disturbing clue about a murder case,

The author puts the mystery together in a piecemeal way, doing it out of order before providing exposition as to how all these characters and the story connect together.

It was pretty interesting and well done, though I got confused by the names and forgot who was who at times.

I liked the illustrations; it provided an eerie backdrop to the disturbing story and unsettling feeling you get as you're reading.

Hope the author writes more in the future!

Wow! Strange Pictures, an instant favorite, is unlike anything I've read before. Theses four, interconnected stories use "strange pictures" to convey the mysterious and horrific truth of what happens to these characters. This is a not a manga, but a puzzle of a novel with illustrations that are central to the overall plot. This 240-page book is a page-turner that I read in one day. I could not get enough of this story, and look forward to recommending it to friends and patrons alike. Uketsu is one of my new favorite authors and I absolutely cannot wait to read more of their work.

I requested this from NetGalley on a whim, and ended up really enjoying this one!

This horror best seller from Japan, which is now being released in an english translation, takes you through a number of short stories that together provide a bigger picture and reveal the books twist. It made for a compelling way to tell a story, and a quick read that kept me hooked. It's not the smoothest writing style, but I think that's just the nature of translated books and it didn't take away from my enjoyment of the story. I'd love to read more by this author!

Oh wow, I loved this book. It's like a picture mystery where you must decipher the hidden meanings of what you see in relation to the story they are woven into. The story is told in three parts with one or more pictures included that have to be 'solved' in the same way to make sense of the hidden meaning. At first, I wasn't quite sure how that would be accomplished, but then one of the characters references optical illusions and it began to make sense. I'm a huge fan of those!

But then all three parts are actually connected into the same story and that just blew my mind. If you keep that in mind at the start, you'll see little clues here and there that will help you tie everything together. The translation is where it gets tricky, as it's hard to tell if it's the author's writing style or the way it was translated. The dialogue is quite choppy and childlike at times. which isn't a problem for me, especially because the pictures are the main focus.

I've never heard of the author, Uketsu, but I researched them after reading this and can't believe what I've been missing. I'm not one for YouTube videos, but man, I really hope this is only the first in a series of stories. I devoured the whole book in one sitting and I already crave more! Plus I love the design of the cover. It drew my attention and then I read the blurb and that was it - I had to read it and I'm so glad I did!