Reviews with content warning for Toxic friendship - In the Miso Soup

Reviews tagging 'Toxic friendship'

In the Miso Soup by Ryū Murakami

12 reviews

joelles_bookshelf's review

dark mysterious tense medium-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? Yes

3.75

I picked up this book primarily because I saw on Tiktok that it was on a list titled 'Books that make you feel Unsettled'. I found it in my university library and decided to read it because I wanted to feel unsettled and have a genre change. The book was slow initially but a good kind of slow, a slow that makes you sink into the plot and the characters. Suddenly in Part Two of the book, everything happened so fast.

I enjoyed it but I was slightly dissatisfied at the ending. I wasn't really sure what to make of it or how to feel after reading it. I would like to check if there is an in-depth analysis online as I felt somewhat empty. I'm not sure if that was the intention, but if so, they were successful.

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erin2802's review

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dark emotional tense fast-paced

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

3.75

Horrifying and gruesome are good words to use, especially one part in particular. A commentary on the loneliness of regular people and their moral ambiguities. Frank is a terrifying character and the calmness and stoic nature of him makes him all the more creepy. Kenji is no saint either, he did not do the things that Frank did, but he was complicit in his actions. Though after experiencing something so traumatic, I don’t know what anyone would do, I suppose it was a matter or survival? All in all, an interesting book, it did what it set out to do, which is to horrify and intrigue the reader.

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jan_coco_day's review

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challenging dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Ryu Murakami is the superior Murakami.

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melodyseestrees's review

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dark tense fast-paced

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

1.75

This is a gore-filled book and has a lot of violence against women characters. The majority of the killer's victims are women somewhere between high school age and their thirties. The killer talks about sex with the dying bodies of women in a particularly grotesque manner.

He slits one woman's throat, exposes her vagina, tries to get another man to fuck her as she is dying and then ends up putting a severed ear inside her. He also rants about dead woman's "pussy being the best best" because "the brain is dead but the pussy is still alive so there is no resistance."

There is one man killed as brutally as some of the women. There are two other men killed but not much detail is given. There is a homeless person who also dies with details given via the news.
The killer's motives for their actions are lackluster and dissatisfactory.

The killer has no motives behind killing or whom he chooses to kill. He just kills.

The killer's backstory and skillset are also very lackluster.

He learned how to slit throats without them gushing blood from people in reform schools. Even though he was 4-7 years old when he attacked his mom, killed a swan, or killed two people that are never described in detail. Oh and he was also into black magic and hypnosis too, of course.

This is a story to read if you love gore, hate women, and aren't fussed about the details. This is not what I look for in horror and I think it should be categorized as Gore Porn or light Splatterpunk instead.

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