A review by rara2018
The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji

5.0

I enjoyed this book so so much more than I thought I was going to after the first chapter or so. I initially found the translation to feel very stilted and the characters to be tremendously dull and one note. Luckily, I persevered and ended up truly enjoying this story. I found the actual mystery parts of the story to be excellent with its double simultaneous narrations of the island and the mainland adding a ton of complexity to the story. Despite my initial misgivings, I also ended up actually caring about the fate of the characters (Ellery being my personal favorite and just generally the character whose motives and actions I found the most compelling). I had vaguely guessed who the culprit was, though not in any real sense of the word, and my jaw literally dropped at the reveal—which, to be honest, I wish had been the very end of the story. I appreciated kind of getting to see how all the murders occurred, but it felt a little redundant, and I felt like it detracted from the story as a whole. Yukito Ayatsuji did an excellent job of making me tremendously anxious for most of the book to the point where despite my being desperately tired and wanting to go to bed, I physically could not put the book down because I was that hooked. This is my personal favorite type of mystery with there being compelling parallels and the clues falling together in a way that made total sense, though not necessarily what I expected. I’m definitely going to read more by this author. Is this actually worth five stars? Probably not since I was a little frustrated with how it started and ended, but I was just so hooked in the middle that anything under five would feel like a mistake.

I do just want to give Van Dine credit for such an immaculately plotted scheme, with everything from the painting canvasses, to the rotted room, and the pseudo-copy cat aspect of the murders. Also, I am 1000% positive that all these characters were deeply romantically in love with one another.