I received this book from the publisher on Edelweiss in exchange of an honest review.

I absolutely LOVED the novel for this one and so I have been quite curious about this manga adaptation for a while. I was thinking of picking it up in German, but then I saw the book on Edelweiss and so my plans were diverted. I was so eager to read this one!

And I have to say it was good, it was just a strange and mysterious as the original, HOWEVER, some panels just missed the flow. While the transition from A-Ko’s art and the lecture about it to the blog posts made sense and felt natural, the transition from the blog posts to the next story just felt odd and I was confused. It helps that I read the novel and so I know what is going on, but I still struggled to connect things. I think this transition could have been far better.

This book focusses on the first chapter of the novel with a slight bit from the second chapter. I am really impressed that they managed to weave a 44 page story (with a lot of blog posts and several art pieces) into a 168 page manga and it all felt good (well except those transitions, haha). I am definitely curious about the other four volumes, especially the later ones as, if it is anything like the novel, those will be the ones with the most OMG OMG moments. Now we are just setting the stage. We get puzzle pieces but don’t see the full picture.

So in this first volume we learn about A-ko, the girl who murdered her mother and why she did it. This may seem like a random lecture especially since after that we are going to the blog posts, but be sure to remember A-ko, OK. I liked seeing the teacher explain several important details along with the drawings A-ko made. After that lecture we see our MC, Sasaki, learn about a certain blog from a friend. This blog isn’t like any others. It may just seem something normal, about a man and his wife and her pregnancy, but with the addition of the drawings and some details in the posts you quickly figure out that something is off. I loved seeing Sasaki get totally invested in the blog posts to the point he just kept reading. After that comes more, because of course this blog isn’t your ordinary blog as I already said. And with Sasaki and his friend we are going to figure things out. Sure, we still don’t learn everything or every detail, but we get some very interesting details that one should really remember as we read more stories in this novel/in this manga series. I loved that the friend also let Sasaki himself figure things out before helping him out, that is something that I really appreciate as I have read enough books featuring characters who just show it without given the other a chance.

And the art was also pretty good! And the addition of drawings was once again perfection, I already loved those in the novel and I am happy to see the same drawings here.

All in all, I would highly recommend this one. I kept it vague because this is one novel (and manga series) that you need to discover by yourself. I am rating this one 4 stars because of the flow that at times missed + the fact that for me there won’t be a lot of surprises and that does take away from the fun, at least a bit. I think if this was a new read for me I would have rated it 4.5 or higher.