I got this softcover at Barnes and Noble. I found Volume One intriguing - and harrowing - and wanted to read more.

This series looks benign on the face of it, but as the title suggests, it's pretty dark. The story centers on Seiichi, a boy whose life seems normal and happy; his mother wakes him up for school, his classmates tease but seem to like him, he has a crush on a girl in his class... Details of daily life unfold, and seem pleasant if ordinary - and then the first hints of something off-key creep in, having to do with his mother's obsessive feelings. At the end of the last volume, Seiichi saw his mother commit a truly appalling act; how will that change his life?

This volume picks up after Shige's fall, as the family gathers around and waits for medical help to arrive. And poor Seiichi winds up corroborating his mother's account of what happened on the cliff top, terrified to do otherwise.

The book is full of closeups of faces and eyes and body postures - Shigi looking at Seiichi, Seiichi's mother looking at him, on and on, and each time with tiny details and cinematic effect, emotional and tense. You can see the thoughts behind the eyes, it's that powerful. Poor Seiichi has nightmares of his mother, and a dead cat she showed him when he was little, and of his mother with haunting all-black eyes...

And then things get even more tense: a classmate of Seiichi's drops by to give him a love letter, and when his mother finds out... yeah. It's a master class in a dysfunctional relationship.

[There's a TV Tropes page on the series.]

Guidelines for safely visiting and stocking Little Free Libraries during the COVID-19 pandemic, from the LFL site here.

I left this book in my Little Free Library; hope someone enjoys it!

[See other recent releases in NH here.]

*** Released for the 2021 Heads Shoulders Knees Toes challenge. ***

This one's gone unclaimed for a couple of months now, so I'm taking it out of rotation to make room for some different books.

Guidelines for safely visiting and stocking Little Free Libraries during the COVID-19 pandemic, from the LFL site here.

I left this in the Little Free Library on this lovely day; hope someone enjoys it!

[See other recent releases in MA here.]