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Chain Mail: Addicted to You
by
Hiroshi Ishizaki,
Richard Kim , Rachel Manija Brown (Goodreads Author)
Four disillusioned Tokyo teenagers who have never met are suddenly drawn together by a mysterious chain mail message sent to their cell phones.
Paperback, 209 pages
Published
January 9th 2007
by Tokyopop
(first published 2003)
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Community Reviews
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Would you like to create a fictional world? A series of chain mail had been disseminated to teenage girls in Tokyo. To enter, you have to keep yourself anonymous, choose one from the four characters—a heroine, a college crush, a detective, and a stalker—and write a gripping story. The result, a perfectly cooked story that the facets between reality and fantasy become inseparable. Before the four girls reach the conclusion of the make-believe story, accidents unfold and everyone has to be punishe
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okay so let me just say how tremendously i enjoyed this book i mean THIS IS WHY I LOVE JAPAN okay. i love japanese films/dramas (which are usually manga/novel-based) so it's easy to say that this read was like watching a typical j-movie. i have to commend the translator/english adaptator (view spoiler) for doing a clean and percipient job in making the narration flow easily and simply like a nice bedtime story. you can
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For as long as it lasts, Chain Mail: Addicted to You is a suspenseful, involving book that makes for a quick and entertaining read. Once it was over, however, I'd felt like I'd wasted my time reading it. The twist at the end wasn't bad in and of itself, but because of the way that the book is structured, it is fairly problematic. The entire cast is given equal weight in the narrative, but without spoiling anything, all I can wonder here is if the invalidation of one perspective can be achieved i
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Chain Mail by Hiroshi Ishizaki is a story in four different teenagers point of views. Each teen is connected to each other by a chain mail message sent to their phone. All end up joining a site where they each take on a role in a narrative story. One plays a schoolgirl stalked by a boy, while another plays her stalker, boyfriend, and detective. However, their roles in the story start to seemingly become reality. Chain Mail is a tale woven into an unforgettable story filled with angst and suspens
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I'm pretty new to Asian books and only got my hands on this one by accident. It was a free gift when I attended some kind of book exposition / market. I have to say I'm happy that I got the chance to read it.
I read the book just in one day. The book has about 200 pages and is written in a very fluent style (I'm talking about the translation here). Those Asian names for people and places were pretty new to me, but not in a negative way.
I quite liked the concept: four people who start writing a fi ...more
I read the book just in one day. The book has about 200 pages and is written in a very fluent style (I'm talking about the translation here). Those Asian names for people and places were pretty new to me, but not in a negative way.
I quite liked the concept: four people who start writing a fi ...more
Nov 13, 2012
Jennifer Wardrip
rated it
liked it
Shelves:
trt-posted-reviews,
read-by-other-reviewers
Reviewed by Mechele R. Dillard for TeensReadToo.com
Hiroshi Ishizaki's premise for this novel is an interesting one: Have characters who do not know each other writing a novel within a novel. Four lonely teens--Yukari, Sawako, Mai, and Mayumi--enter into the world of role playing through an anonymous chain e-mail, allowing them to create a fictional world in which each girl assumes the role of a character. The girls then write scenes from their respective character's point of view, building a sto ...more
Hiroshi Ishizaki's premise for this novel is an interesting one: Have characters who do not know each other writing a novel within a novel. Four lonely teens--Yukari, Sawako, Mai, and Mayumi--enter into the world of role playing through an anonymous chain e-mail, allowing them to create a fictional world in which each girl assumes the role of a character. The girls then write scenes from their respective character's point of view, building a sto ...more
Plot:
Four disillusioned Tokyo teenagers who have never met are suddenly drawn together by a mysterious chain mail message sent to their cell phones. In the tradition of classical Japanese tanka poetry, each teen takes on a role in the intriguing and absorbing narrative: the schoolgirl stalked by an older boy; her mysterious stalker; the schoolgirl’s boyfriend; and the female detective. Written from each character’s point of view, Chain Mail carries the reader on a suspenseful adventure juxtaposi ...more
Four disillusioned Tokyo teenagers who have never met are suddenly drawn together by a mysterious chain mail message sent to their cell phones. In the tradition of classical Japanese tanka poetry, each teen takes on a role in the intriguing and absorbing narrative: the schoolgirl stalked by an older boy; her mysterious stalker; the schoolgirl’s boyfriend; and the female detective. Written from each character’s point of view, Chain Mail carries the reader on a suspenseful adventure juxtaposi ...more
Review: Sawako, Yukari, Mai and Mayumi are four teenagers fed up with life. And one day they get an email to their phones inviting them to write a story. Each takes on one charcter and writes a little from their character’s point of view, and then the next person carries on the narrative. Each takes one of the four characters to narrate in this way, a schoolgirl, her boyfriend/tutor, her stalker and a detective. Together they write the story, but there is also a little more than that. They start
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Oct 12, 2012
Rissa
rated it
really liked it
Recommends it for:
teenagers, young adults, roleplayers, high school students, junior high students, lonely people tbh
Recommended to Rissa by:
friends
"Fiction creates an unreal world that's better than the real one."
That line itself brought me to go on further into reading the book. I admit, for one, that the beginning of the book was a little dragging. Much like a lot of books, I guess. But I found my heart beating erratically by the time I reached the middle part of the book. I felt my chest tighten, and my mind racing as to the possibilities of what could happen next. It was suspenseful and thrilling despite being a teen angst short novel. ...more
That line itself brought me to go on further into reading the book. I admit, for one, that the beginning of the book was a little dragging. Much like a lot of books, I guess. But I found my heart beating erratically by the time I reached the middle part of the book. I felt my chest tighten, and my mind racing as to the possibilities of what could happen next. It was suspenseful and thrilling despite being a teen angst short novel. ...more
This Japanese teen novel was a bit dark for teens, for anyone. Some anonymous teens work on writing a web novel called "Chain Mail." It has to do with a male stalker bothering a young woman. Truth gets mixed in fiction, as the story gets more complex. It is interesting, but after the initial premise, I started to get bored and didn't feel that the novel held up enough interest for me. My favorite parts where when the author describes Japan, and I think I would have liked more of that. The author
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Un roman prenant et bien mené, la pression monte à chaque nouvelle page tournée. On attend avec impatience de pouvoir en lire la fin, le dénouement de l'intrigue, une scène grandiose où tout est dévoilé... mais ce n'est finalement qu'une grosse déception, une fin expéditive et expédiée, presque bâclée et trop facile. Quel dommage !
Les personnages manquent parfois de profondeur, leur profil est un peu caricatural mais rien d'étonnant pour un roman japonais pour ado.
Les personnages manquent parfois de profondeur, leur profil est un peu caricatural mais rien d'étonnant pour un roman japonais pour ado.
I found the book absolutely fantastic and it was so exciting that i actually read the entire book in 2 days. The language was a bit complex and it contained phrases and sentences that you had too really think about to understand the true meaning. There may be awkward sentences and phrases or names since the original novel is in japanese. But the translation is quite nice. You might not understand if you dont have a bit of a background knowledge of japan which can be a bit annoying.
Anyways, this ...more
Anyways, this ...more
A book about role playing on cell phones is a great idea.
Soon it'll be great historical fiction.
Soon it'll be great historical fiction.
Three japanese teenagers who had no connections with each other suddenly receive an invitation to "create a fictional world". They soon began to write a story in the internet of a young woman haunted by her stalker. The teenage girls, along with the sender of the invitation, takes turns in writing the story, telling it in the points of view of their characters, which includes the young woman, the stalker, the woman's love interest, and the detective who pursues the stalker.
At first the highlight ...more
At first the highlight ...more
I’m sad that this book is out of print now, because it’s a really good read that I just happened on when I need something new. It was hard to find to begin with, and with Tokyopop going under, chances of getting a copy are a bit slimmer.
I really clicked on this, mostly because of the premise. Hey, it’s about writing, I tend to jump on those books. And the whole ‘writing a story’ really comes to life here. I like that all of the main girls have ideas of where to take the characters they’re writi ...more
I really clicked on this, mostly because of the premise. Hey, it’s about writing, I tend to jump on those books. And the whole ‘writing a story’ really comes to life here. I like that all of the main girls have ideas of where to take the characters they’re writi ...more
I want to call it a "must read" for teens who devour manga and want to get their hands on anything Japanese. It is a novel (actual novel - no pictures!) that is suspenseful and has some clever twists. However, what makes this a "must read" is not the story alone, but what an American reader can take away from it. The book clearly explains how much effort and competition there is for top Japanese schools. You get an idea of differences between American ideas and Japanese ideas with the character
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This book started out as a bit of a train wreck with annoying characters, a simple story, and a lot of Japanese pop culture name-dropping to the point it was annoying (Pocari, Gackt, southeast exit of Shinjuku train station, and I can go on forever). Especially the characters really annoyed me throughout the whole book. The book really didn't get better until about 100 pages in (it's a thin book, so that's about halfway), when there was actually something happening. In all fairness, I did end up
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Oct 02, 2013
Alexis
rated it
it was amazing
Recommends it for:
Friedrich Nietzche LOVERS/Moral Nihilists/Existentialists/Human Haters (kinda)
Recommended to Alexis by:
Goodreads- obvs
No words. My mind is blown.
Four teenagers (view spoiler) co-write a fictional story together after receiving the same chain-message email invite. This novel explores anxiety and isolation, delusional and paranoid thinking, existentialism, childhood trauma and expectations in a way that appeals to the teenage mind. It's pure genius.
I'm always ready to write a scathing review about a book. I think it's a fab way to unleash pent up anger over social injustic ...more
Four teenagers (view spoiler) co-write a fictional story together after receiving the same chain-message email invite. This novel explores anxiety and isolation, delusional and paranoid thinking, existentialism, childhood trauma and expectations in a way that appeals to the teenage mind. It's pure genius.
I'm always ready to write a scathing review about a book. I think it's a fab way to unleash pent up anger over social injustic ...more
I read this cause I’m sort of interested in fiction that shows how technology changes the way characters interact with one another, but there isn’t anything innovative going on here. It’s written really simplistically and you have to pretend to be convinced that there are four different points of view, even though each point of view is an indistinguishable stock teenage girl's voice. You also have to contend with each character explaining everything to you as you go, which is apparently why I do
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I read this for an 8th grade book report, and I cannot express how much I love the plotline and characters. Unfortunately, since I read it some three years ago, I can't exactly remember the details of what happened, but I know and remember the amazing "I feel like some part of my soul just died with the completion of this book" feeling that I had when I finished it. I love how smoothly the point of view changes, something that easily causes confusion when not introduced properly.
It is amazingly ...more
It is amazingly ...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
I picked this up because of the concept--high school girls in Japan collaborate virtually on a story that eventually gets out of hand--and because I hadn't previously really tried Tokyopop's fiction line. The characters both in the novel and in the story within a story are well realized, and although the ending doesn't really live up to the rest of it I certainly didn't want to put it down. Also fun for me was a bit further insight in to what it might be like to fight through such a competitive
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I really enjoyed this. It's about four lonely teenage girls who don't know each other but begin playing a role-play story through their cellphones. Their roleplay story is about a teenage girl who is being stalked, and at first that story was much more interesting than the real story, but about half-way through things suddenly start getting really thrilling and scary in their real lives too and I was really gripped. It has a great twist that I half-guessed right before it happened, which is alwa
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This book was good in the fact that it was suspenseful and entertaining. It definitely had a twist at the end that I expected but at the same time I didn't. The characters all added to the suspense of the story. This was one of those books that I didn't want to put down because I wanted to find out what happens. The whole plot of the story was intriguing to begin with, but by the end it went in a totally different direction then I first expected. Basically these girls wanted to create a fictiona
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What a fascinating book. Although the ending is a major let-down, in my opinion, this is great to discuss multi-cultural norms in YA reading.
The idea of texting a novel/story is the center of this book. there are three (or is it four) girls in middle/junior high in Japan -- all who have gifts, whether in academics or sports or whatever -- who decide to construct a mystery story online by texting their submissions. Each girl takes a role in the basic story. But suddenly the story seems to be comi ...more
The idea of texting a novel/story is the center of this book. there are three (or is it four) girls in middle/junior high in Japan -- all who have gifts, whether in academics or sports or whatever -- who decide to construct a mystery story online by texting their submissions. Each girl takes a role in the basic story. But suddenly the story seems to be comi ...more
This book is marketed as a light novel, a sort of thriller for youth. However, I realized as I was reading it that it's a lot more than that. I can't quite place why, but this book is one of those that gets stuck in your mind. It's excellent as a thriller, and has a lot of concepts a lot deeper than most "light novels", such as the role of fiction in our lives and the true concept of self. Exceptionally creepy, with great characters. I've read and close-read the book several times, and I'd highl
...more
Jan 29, 2014
Ivy Rodriguez
added it
I enjoyed it, though I found it a bit odd
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“Fictional stories were written so that they seemed real, kind of like a well-executed lie. Fiction creates an unreal world that's better than the real one.”
—
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“Anyway, what does "wrong" mean? Who decides what's wrong and what's right?”
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