Confessions
By Kanae Minato, trans. Stephen Snyder
Publication Year: 2014 (originally published in Japanese in 2008)
Type: Fiction
Genre: crime, thriller
Read on 2020-05-20
View additional specs on this book in Muhan’s 2020 Reading Survey ➞
★★☆☆☆
A book recounting a series of crimes and insidious acts committed by a middle-school teacher and her students against one another. Story begins with the apparent drowning of the teacher's four-year-old daughter, and each character gets their own POV section recounting what happened and what happened next in their perspective. A lot of reviews talk about how horrific some of the acts are and honestly I've read way worse - in terms of both what literally happens and the underlying psychology - in other crime thrillers. It was very slow and kind of just plodded along - here wasn't really anything driving the plot or keeping me engaged, and it wasn't interesting enough to learn about the characters' motivations in their POV chapters after another character already told that part of the story. Just a series of events that happen and there doesn't seem to be any particular theme or point the book makes about any of it.
See me review other Japanese crime books in this video!
