推し、燃ゆ Book Review

推し、燃ゆ (おし、もゆ) – 宇佐見りん Premise

The premise of this book is the main girl, Akari, is a super fan of this one idol from an artist group. But the idol gets into a scandal and his fame goes down from there. This is her viewpoint of the entire situation and her own downward spiral congruent to his.

Book Review

So this story is very much a glimpse into her life. Hence it feels like there’s very little plot until the end. Up until about page 40, it’s all background info into her history with 推し (おし), her blog, her collection of stuff, etc. 推し (おし) means bias or favorite.

Overall

I was expecting more plot or action from this book, but I realize now that this is just a snapshot of her life. It gives a glimpse into her life including her blog, relationship with her sister and mother, part-time job at the cafe, her bad grades, lack of motivation, etc. This is the plot. It’s slice-of-life. It shows a more realistic approach to the life of a teenager. In reality, most people don’t have that interesting of lives either lol.

From a Language Learning Point-of-View

As someone who likes idols and knows about Jpop fan culture, I had an initial interest in this book, but the severe lack of action and dialogue made it harder to read as a learner. So much of the story was in her head and there was a lot of explanation and insight through her own point-of-view.

The pacing is really hard with this book cause there’s no real chapters, just some breaks in the middle. It kind of jumps around between her thoughts, past, and the present real world. There’s also not much dialogue and it doesn’t say who is speaking most of the time either.

I think it could be more interesting, but as someone still learning, it was difficult to follow and understand some parts of it. I can see how this story appeals to young Japanese adults in their teens and 20’s who are fans of celebrities though.

Level Verdict

As far as level difficulty goes, I’d say it’s a N2 level for kanji and vocab, but only N3 for grammar. There are some N2 grammar points mixed in there, but it’s mostly N3 to be honest. Overall it’s not that difficult to understand provided you can read the kanji. I’d say maybe low N2 is good enough to understand most of it probably.