Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - Heaven

Not completely sure how to feel about this book, it was a very heavy read and some of the characters’ outlooks on the world were quite unsettling, though not impossible to understand. They’re kids who still have a lot of maturing to do, and don’t necessarily understand the world around them that well yet, so I can see how they’d think like that, which all the more adds to the sort of pain I felt reading this, witnessing the hardship of navigating the dark parts of the world and trauma and violence and things like that at such a young age. Rough.

Content Warnings

cakrawala's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

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

2.0

i don't even know what to say about this book. it's really disturbing and heartbreaking. the graphic description of bullying made me took a lot of pauses when i read this book. definitely would never read this again.

Content Warnings

luc3sca's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

I’ve heard great things about this book and I wanted to love it, but I can’t. It left me feeling really empty and confused. I feel like I’m missing something. For example I didn’t really understand Kojima’s character. Every time we saw her it felt like she was a different person. And Momose’s small speech he gave to the main character when they met outside the hospital kind of just melted into confusing rambling for me. The timeline in this book is also hard to grasp because Kawakami doesn’t really differentiate between what’s happening in the present and what’s a flashback. One thing near the end that completely threw me off was that on page 111, it says that the calendar reads Decemeber 1991, but then on page 134 it says that it’s November? Am I misunderstanding something? I also felt the masturbation parts were really strange and jarring, I honestly felt sick at page 152.
Maybe I’ll re-read this again sometime, because this left me extremely confused.

Content Warnings

fairytomie's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional inspiring sad tense fast-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

4.25

This book truly ripped my heart out. This is my introduction to Kawakami’s work and i’m in love with how poetic her writing is.

Justice for these characters and the fact we don’t know what happened to Kojima is so heart-wrenching.

Content Warnings

evajoanna's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional medium-paced

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

3.5

Content Warnings

More...