Maria

Cute book/Comic. I liked that she always opened with something seemingly unrelated but it started to feel a bit repetitive and gimmicky after the 3rd story.

I liked the topic and what the book says about social norms, conformity, hierarchy. I wish though it wouldn't explain all of that so explicitly and repeatedly. I wish some things were left unsaid because with the argument laid out so plainly it was a bit boring to me.
The characters and the constellation of relationships were used well to show the hypocrisy and Keiko's struggle to find her way of being.

Wow. I hope no one, ever gets any advice about love from this book. Unless maybe they are 13 to learn that you can love someone if they like different shoes than you.
But then I think even teenage love can have more depth and is surely more pure than what was presented here.

As the form goes I appreciate the endeavour of merging philosophy with a novel but it was neither a nice novel nor has it taught me anything insightful or new about philosophy. I mean yeah, I get it, idealisation, Plato...

The stories were very monotonous in what they tried to convey and how they did it. Even though each story is written from a POV of a different character I felt like I was interacting with one narrator throughout the book.

The style often lacked depth or variety which made the characters unconvincing. Some endings were over the top dramatic and unfortunately left me cringed rather than moved.

I don't want to go too much into the moral message of this book so that aside it's just bad prose.

I enjoyed some small bits of Thai culture you can get from the book; like descriptions of scenery, food, clothes and jobs. If you're willing to swallow the above complaints, I recommend the book as a means to get a bit of knowledge about Thai culture.

Somehow after The Friend it was a bit of a let down. Felt like sth similar to the earlier book but worse. ;(