I updated the calendar in the OP, but wasn’t sure where this was as I don’t have a papercopy. I approximated it by taking this listed page divided by the total you gave for your copy and found what I think was the intended stopping point a couple pages over. If you could verify though I’d appreciate it!
I unfortunately don’t think there’s a way to not spoil those words a bit as you need to know them to stop and there can be more than one English phrase per section 
I didn’t give the stopping phrase for p372 because it was the same as a pre-existing endpoint under the old schedule 
You could put the words in a spoiler marker – by the time you get to that part of the book they won’t be spoilery, it’s only when you’re still reading the earlier parts of the book that you might prefer not to see them yet.
Added.
Also, a quick reminder that anyone can modify the home post to their liking - it is a wiki. If there is something about formatting/etc you aren’t liking, this club is a group effort, not something I own, so help yourself.
Also I’m going to continue posting the weekly threads but I’ve decided to join a few other club members in speed reading the rest of the book. I usually avoid breaking the schedule, but with this particular book I think it’s the better choice for me.
Alrighty, I have finished the book.
MAJOR SPOILERS THROUGH THE END; DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN’T FINISHED
I think I need a bit more time to process everything; I’m pretty mixed on my feelings on the book. On one hand, the twists were fun. I like the idea of the main character being some psychotic murderer, and I like Sherlock Holmes figures, so I appreciated having one who operated under the cover of a spiritual medium. I was reeaaally hoping the ending would somehow work out that he would join her and they would solve crime through committing crime (?) (hey, I’ve seen the idea successfully played with, it can work) or something, but alas.
I can appreciate the author’s attempt at setup throughout the book; issues with the main character especially (his fixation on girls, his complete and total lack of personality, etc.) I’m glad were intentional and not just poor writing. I do wish Hisui had slipped up a bit more or something, though, just to get the reader thinking.
I think ultimately what’s stopping me from recommending this as a good book is that, somehow, It was just plain boring for 90%. My god, even during the ending I couldn’t believe we were going to have to read through each case in excruciating detail as Hisui walked through each and every step as Kougetsu stood there and said “omg no way, how could you know that???” (like a true Watson, I suppose). The individual cases were not nearly interesting enough to take as much time as they did, and how they were solved, with Hisui leaving one hint and Kougetsu haing to logic his way through that were not particularly engaging, even if I can respect the idea behind it. Ultimately, this book did not need to be 500 pages long; the foreshadowing did not, in my opinion, justify it.
Perhaps I would feel different if I weren’t listening to the audiobook; the spoken word is always slower than the read. Perhaps I would feel different if I were reading this in English and could zoom through over a day or two; it’s hard to say. I can definitely see why for some people it was an awesome book, and I’m glad they had a good time; I hope the sequels/next books are just as good for them.
And even after saying all that, it’s still not my least favorite mystery club book we’ve read so far, haha. Like I said, my feelings on this were mixed. Honestly, it might be a fun read to go back to when I have time, the memories have faded a bit, and I’ve increased my JP reading speed.
Edit: Oh, I also appreciated how the cover is a reference to Hisui at the end. I already thought it was a pretty cover, and it’s nice to have some extra context around it.
Anyway, those were my immediate thoughts; I’m looking forward to hearing everyone else’s! One thing I’ve been thinking about that I hope doesn’t discourage anyone is how negative the group can end up being; especially near the end, when the number of people who’ve managed to keep up gets real small, I feel like there’s a tendency to echo chamber negative thoughts. Everyone’s welcome to their own opinion, of course, but I hope seeing all the dissatisfied club members doesn’t dissuade anyone from reading/enjoying the book.
Yes, I hated that. I wanted to just rush ahead, while Hisui was nearly breaking the fourth wall by saying “this is the challenge to the reader; if you just go ahead without thinking about it you are just lazy”. Insult to injury.
My thought, exactly. In fact, I would have liked it better for her to be truly a medium (and the narrator just poorly written) rather than whatever that was. It’s fun to add extra rules to the concept of mystery books. But just as a distraction for a regular mystery book… come on, that way too much to go through for that level of reward. It felt too little, too late. I think it might have worked with one case less? Hard to say.
I zoomed through it in a few days (can’t remember exactly) and I still felt that way. Would not recommend.
I think I heard from someone (maybe cat?) that booktubers were unanimously praising it, which is weird to me. I can see someone liking it, but it doesn’t feel like everyone would…
It definitely feels like a “mass appeal” book to me. Nothing too offensive, maybe a little bit of danger with the interludes, cute girl, big plot twist you have to read RIGHT NOW, etc. people who don’t read as a main hobby or most content creators are not nearly as picky as people who do, haha.
Were you there/in the convo when I mentioned my friend’s theory on why content creators seem to love All The Books? She said that basically like, because booktubers are generally showing their faces, they don’t want to risk getting hate from either a) fans of the book or b) people who work at the place that published the book. Identity being tied into things you like (idols, authors, etc) is stronger in Japan than in the West (where it is also definitely present) – but also because it’s still pretty normal for people to work for the same company for years and years it’s common for your company to become part of your identity. So she was like, if you trash talk a book their company published, the employees could get mad at you / cause you problems.
This honestly tracks with the more intense negative opinions I’ve seen about books online being totally anonymous.
I guess if I want to rely on Booktubers I need to focus on finding ones who have the same taste as me based on books they specifically highlight as being favorites rather than a list of like ‘here’s all the 本屋大賞 winners and why they’re great!’
Very interesting, I was not present for that conversation. Makes a lot of sense to me; if the product you’re selling is yourself, you may not necessarily want to isolate yourself from potential corners of your market at least too easily.
Time to establish a Vbooktuber. Then no one knows your face or who you actually are!
There already are vbooktubers but I can’t stand the voices 
Turn off the sound 
Considering the amount of incrusted subtitles I see on Japanese videos, I don’t think you’ll miss much.
Edit: found one Vtuber doing specifically mystery book recommendations.
One list was like “100 recs in less than 10 minutes”.
Number one:
(Technically a recommendation from “兄貴” (background), not from her, but still…)
Edit2: I was checking without the sound, though, just to try, so I don’t really know what they said about it.
Edit3: I thought of checking her recs, and medium is also number 1… 
you speak the truth. I have literally nothing to add.
I was sooooo bored having to go through all the cases again.
Tbf, a few people caught onto Hisui and Kougetsu (from what I’ve seen in the weekly threads) but I never read mysteries trying to solve them. I just want a nice surprise at the end and while I enjoyed the twists, the ending was like someone dying on stage and continuing a death monologue for like 30 minutes.
I was going to hold off writing my thoughts on the book until the club finished, but since we apparently started discussing it…
The trick of the narrator actually being the baddie has been done many times before, so it’s not really such a clever trick as the author seems to think. To be done effectively, the narration should ideally be in the first person. While we were aware we were seeing things from Kougetsu’s point of view, it wasn’t clear that all descriptions were his. I’m still unsure to what extent those nauseating descriptions (skin like cake, her green eyes, her long eyelashes, blah blah) were Kougetsu rather than the author himself.
On top of that, Kougetsu was so much an empty shell, that he could be filled by anything, from an angel to a serial killer. Surely the author should have tried to establish some sort of personality for the trick to work effectively?
As Kougetsu was a blank, Hisui was a caricature, in both her versions. First she is the oh-so-innocent, naive even, and oh-so-sensitive child-like beautiful woman who despite her talents obviously needs constant protection and guidance. Then she is the super-intelligent mastermind and manipulator who solves crimes at a glance, and is not even fazed by being tied to a chair by a weapon wielding maniac, that’s all child’s play to her. Uh-huh. Then the author, possibly realizing that his characters lack any kind of depth, added that last scene where we see that there was in fact some truth to the side Kougetsu was seeing, and she might in fact have had feelings for him too 
All in all, this was a very badly executed book. It basically made the readers sit through pages upon pages of unexciting plot with no substance so as to surprise them at the end with the “big reveal”. But big reveals are worth nothing if the setup itself is worthless. I had sort of predicted/hoped for this twist back at the start of the book, when I still had some interest in it. By the end of it though, I just didn’t care at all.
There was a slight rise in interest when the twist was revealed - will we finally get to see actual people behind these caricatures? But no, one stereotype was replaced with another, and then we had to go over the tedious parts of the book again, in an even more tedious way, so that we could now admire Hisui’s extraordinary intellect and laugh at Kougetsu’s shock and humiliation. Right. 
So yeah, I can’t say I enjoyed the book. 
I had such high hopes for the reveal; I was legitimately interested in seeing what the author would do next. But yeah…
Hopefully it’s just bad luck on our part that we’ve had two books in the mystery club so far accused of over-explaining; this one and 七回死んだ男. It’s not the worst of sins, granted. Probably part of it too is aggravated by us being language learners.
I’m so curious what ya’ll wrote that I’m now also tempted to read ahead
Sorry, we didn’t mean to tempt you. 
Our posts will still be there any time you finish
I dropped this book after the first case, since it took a ton of effort to read for an absolute snoozefest of an outcome and tedious narration. Figured I’d see what folks have to say just in case it gets better so I can make a note to come back to it in the future. “Maybe the later cases are stronger, maybe later it make it more than one page without mentioning eyes or eyelashes.” Looks like that didn’t happen though, lol.
I also finished it. Spoilers under the hide.
I agree with everyone else in this thread basically. I think what made me particularly mad is that it had so many elements of things I love. Disgusting, dehumanizing villians. Unreliable narrators. Two people shown as separate who end up being the same. Whip lash twist at the end. 名探偵 (sorry, I love that trope). Female 名探偵 even! And then…just…terrible execution.
I’m still left with the feeling that the author was the one objectifying Hisui. I still feel like I have no fucking clue who this self-insert Gary Sue is.
Even the police barging in at the end, I love nonsensical dramatic things like that! If…it matches the mood of the book as being over the top and action packed. Here it just felt out of place.
So much disappointment. I want to like so many parts of it but it’s just so clunky and awkward. 
As a side note, this is a controversial ratings book on Natively! Currently at 3 5s, 3 3s, and 2 2s. Well, 3 2s after I rate
edit: @omk3 I just read your official review and I adore it. One of the few times recently where I’m holding back from writing my own because I feel everything that needs to be said has been said!
