Novel of the Week: Socrates In Love by Kyōichi Katayama

If you thought "Me before You" by Jojo Moyes was heart breaking, Socrates In Love by Kyōichi Katayama will definitely raise the bar! I had to spoil a bit of the plot, it was necessary for you to understand....so here's my review and thoughts.
Read More

Sakutaro and Aki are friends and classmates since middle school and they spend a lot of time together. But it is during the first year of high school that this friendship became something more, until they turned out as a proper couple.

The beginning of their love story and all the main events they lived are recount from Sakutaro's POV, in a more or less chronological order, and these stories are alternated with the present story, where Sakutaro is traveling from Japan to Australia (Aki's dream travel) with Aki's parents, to scatter her ashes...

What I liked

If you're not familiar with Japan culture and traditions like I am, this novel could seems a bit peculiar at the beginning, but the reading smooth as far as you keep going further with the novel...It's not just Sakutaro and Aki's relationship, but their relations with schoolmates, parents and, expecially for Sakutaro, with his grandfather, who is indeed a very singular man.

Socrates in Love has everything: romance, tragedy, philosophy and moments of pure joy. It is sometimes a light and happy reading, sometimes you don't understand why the protagonists acted the way they acted and sometimes you just cry....in my case, A LOT!

There's absolutely nothing I did not like about this, for me it's a masterpiece that everyone should read. The protagonists' teenage love and their declarations of love are heart melting, their conversations about life, love, death and everything in between are touching and I spent days after I ended it thinking about it.

My vote: 10/10

Photo credits: goodreads.com