I was thrilled to get another book written by Uketsu. The first book, Strange Pictures, was really good, and I enjoyed every bit of it, so as you can imagine, my expectations were high. This book is structured similarly to his last book.In this story, we also follow pictures, but of floor plans.
Our narrator is a freelance writer, and his speciality is stories of the macabre. He knows so many stories because people often come to him and share all the bad things they’ve experienced in their lives. A lot of times these stories contain… of course, houses.
One day in September of 2019, his friend Yanaoka messaged him. He was looking for a house for himself and his growing family. They finally found a house that looked really promising, but… the floor plan was so off. On the ground floor, there was an odd empty space that looked like it could be a little corridor or something. Still, there were no doors, windows, or access at all, so Yanaoka wanted his friend’s help because, as he said, ‘he knows a lot about weird things’.
After that, our main character gets hooked and reaches out to another friend, an architect, to find out what is going on.They discovered together that on the first floor, another weird thing is happening. A room in the middle without windows. To get to this room, you had to get through another room. Like someone tried to hide this room. That looked weird.Friends started to talk about the possibilities of why it is that way, and the first thing that came to their minds was… There was probably a child living in there that… was a killer. You know, kinda a stretch, really, this would be the first thing that got into your mind? A killer child?Well, from there it gets obvious this is going to be the outcome. I was a little sad because, with the first book, I had more fun and for longer while trying to figure it out. We will get more people involved, and a huge ‘secret’ will be revealed, but it was not exciting or surprising.
It wasn’t the worst book I have ever read; it was still enjoyable, but compared to the first one, it got a 3-star rating.