“Has the captivating quality of a gruesome car crash: As the murders grow bloodier and bloodier, the characters more and more twisted, we find ourselves fascinated and repulsed, unable to look away.”
NO MAJOR SPOILERS
Dark, disturbing, chilling, diabolically clever… All these words and some more fail to describe the brilliance of this novel that truly represents the genre of psychological suspense like none other!
Had been on my tbr for a while and then I kept seeing reviews of books by Japanese authors and this one had to be read!
Having read a few books set in Japan, the characters in this one didn’t shock me outright perhaps though certain parts definitely send a shiver down the spine the way they are explained so unemotionally!
A middle grade teacher gives her class a farewell speech on the last day of the term and tells the class that she knows the murderers of her four year old daughter are sitting amongst them!
She has devised a punishment that will be far more cruel than anything the law would have doled out, given that the perpetrators are minors.
This speech is the explosive start to the revenge drama that is told in multiple voices detailing different perspectives of the same incident and what led to it.
Each of those voices makes you sit up and wonder at how many fundamental things went awry to build up and cause such a tragedy.
And as each person tells you what they did, why and what they hoped to achieve, you are struck by how they have been pushed to do whatever it takes to achieve what seems most important to them!
My confession is that I read it almost in one sitting with very few breaks..I simply couldn’t put it down..
So definitely 5*!
Reviewed by:
Priya Prakash
Added 29th January 2018
