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BookInspector (124 KP) rated Yakuza Moon: The True Story of a Gangster's Daughter in Books

Sep 24, 2020

This book tells a story of Shoko Tendo, and it was a manga version of her memoir. Her life was pretty brutal and filled with bad decisions, drugs and sex. She got mixed with the wrong crowd at a very young age, and that got her into drugs, countless horrible and abusive relationships, mostly with married men. I didn’t like Shoko at all, she continuously made poor decisions in her life, and it all started with her being “Know it all” in her young days.

The narrative of this novel is filled with violence, and it got sadder and more miserable as I was reading through this book. This book is a great example of how poor decisions can ruin one’s life. Even though it was a sad book, I absolutely loved the illustrations used to portray this story. I found this novel quite educational, I learned how people were getting by in Japan in 1990ies, especially women.

This book is quite nerve-racking and upsetting, and the chapters are quite long, but it is a one-sitting read and pages just fly by. The ending of this book rounded up the story very nicely, but I wanted a different ending for Shoko.

So, to conclude, it was an unusual and shocking journey for me, but at the same time an invaluable experience gained throughout the pages, and I would strongly recommend it to everybody.

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Eleanor Luhar (47 KP) rated Glow in Books

Jun 24, 2019

Glow

Ned Beauman | 2015 | Fiction & Poetry

4.0

(1 Ratings)

Book Rating

This is just going to be a quick review of the book I finished last week, Glow. I found it and borrowed it from my local library on a whim because it looked interesting, but I was sort of disappointed. Although I love the scientific references throughout the book I just found it a bit boring, honestly. It was meant to be thrilling and gripping... I just didn't feel that way.

Raf manages to get caught up in some major business involving a new drug, Glow, and a massive corporation called Lacebark. Somehow the mysterious girl he met at a party is also tied up in it, as is the friend of Raf's who recently went missing.

Somehow Raf also meets all the right people along the way, and gets accepted into helping them with their cause. I found this rather unplausable but that's just me, I suppose. My main problem was having no investment in Raf as a character, and not feeling any of his relationships with any other characters to any degree whatsoever. He just didn't feel real enough.

I honestly don't quite get what even happened. Why was Lacebark killing people? Why was Win working for them? I just got a bit lost in the end. It's a shame, because I really liked the amount of biological vocabulary scattered throughout - it made me feel like I'm actually learning things in my Psychology A-Level!

2 to 2.5 stars at a push.