brilliant years

This book started out as a bit of a train wreck with annoying characters, a simple story, and a lot of Japanese pop culture name-dropping to the point it was annoying (Pocari, Gackt, southeast exit of Shinjuku train station, and I can go on forever). Especially the characters really annoyed me throughout the whole book. The book really didn't get better until about 100 pages in (it's a thin book, so that's about halfway), when there was actually something happening. In all fairness, I did end up staying up late to finish reading because I was curious about the ending. The ending of the book had a plot twist, but at the same time it was a huge anti-climax to me.

If you read it as if it were manga, what Tokyopop usually releases, instead of a novel, your expectations of the book will become more realistic. Considering that, the book wasn't too bad. This is a teenage novel, and I'm not a teenager anymore, but at the same time I've read a lot of other teenage novels that were a lot better than this. I even would have liked the Japanese pop culture aspect of this book if it hadn't felt like it was added to the book desperately.

Good thing I got the book for free.