砂糖菓子の弾丸は撃ちぬけない - A Lollypop or A Bullet

I’ve been meaning to read more books from the old Fujimi Mystery Bunko, and what better than this highly acclaimed short novel from what’s probably the most famous writer that published under the label. I have no experience with Sakuraba other than watching a couple of anime episodes of Gosick, but I’m pleasantly surprised with the result here, not in the way I expected but still a solid book overall.

I thought it’d be more of a mystery since, well, the author is famous for that and it literally starts with what seems a murder case, however the story is simple and with a lot more focus in the characters. The plot follows Nagisa for a month since the arrival of the new odd transfer student Umino Mokuzu, and until her death with Nagisa finding the corpse in the mountains. There’s basically no mystery since she dying is revealed in the very first page, and the killer is very easy to guess since early on, if anything the actual mystery of the book is trying to figure out what is wrong with Mokuzu; she’s some oddball compulsive liar that proclaims to be a mermaid with stockholm syndrome to her famous musician father that physically abuses her (there was a moment I actually thought she was going to be a real mermaid tho). The main focus is the relationship between the two girls in a coming of age/seishun story with top tier atmosphere in a similar way that romance LNs from early 00s do but it being a girl meets girl, and well no romance. It’s interesting since it captures both the LN writing style with the development and themes of a more ordinary novel. It surprised how hard it went in the second half of the book, the sense of realism is vivid, like the allegories between kids/adults like the very same title and whatnot, in general the writing is real good.

The book is fairly short with only 200 pages so a lot of stuff is a bit rushed over or not properly closed, but at the same time it’s also the strength since it’s easy and fast to read through, easy to recommend to people that want to get absorbed and ikkiyomi something in an evening. I may need to pick Gosick now too bad I’m horrible at reading series.