Reviews with content warning for Murder - Audition

Reviews tagging 'Murder'

Audition by Ryū Murakami

16 reviews

jroberts3456's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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mossroot's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Audition is the second book by Ryu Murakami that I have read. Having started with Piercing, Audition was a bit slower paced. However, once it gets into the horror, it is so visceral and well described that it feels like a hot iron down your throat.

I've seen some complaints about the ending, but personally I believe it fits so well with the characters and is a really good example of the characterization that Murakami uses.

I really think the ending shows Aoyama finally being broken from his delusional point of view. The spell has truly broken and he sees in her what everyone else has seen the entire time.

Audition took me about two hours to finish.

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cronasbookshelf's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

for the first half of the book, the story was actually pretty interesting and i liked it, but then the second half was just terrible, the pacing was off, the sex scene was awkward and disgusting,

the plot twist of asami being a murderer wasn't at all developed, she just killed the dog and tried to kill aoyama, also i never understood why she wanted to kill him in the first place, plus the whole murder scene was underwhelming, it wasn't scary, just grotesque

. i really didn't like the ending and thought it was just straight up lazy. the protagonist is a creep and his colleague too, they were 40 something year old men trying to get with 20 something year old women and nobody around them thought of it as weird or told them anything. i don't recommend it. i think the author knows how to write interesting characters and the first part of the plot isn't bad, he just couldn't develop the characters or the story in a compelling way + his male characters in this story are all creeps except for shige.

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