This Book Was So Bad, I Had to Cheat to Finish | Pretty Little Squares

all right so new video new book thrown i actually had to redesign the book thrown a little bit uh beforehand the books were stacked one on top the other and that wasn't too sturdy so i've uh stagnated them they're they're stacked like bricks on a brick wall and that makes them a little stronger a little more resistant from cats rushing into them but anyway so uh we are doing something a little different today we are doing two books because the one awful book that i was going to review the forensic certified public accountant and the cremated 64 squares financial statements was an awful book don't get me wrong but the problem is uh it's it's wrong in the same way over and over again this book is more repetitive than something you'd see at a nick sparks convention and that is what brings us here today and this pillow keeps falling on me i'm going to have to staple that back in place now one thing that i keep hearing is fans are worried about the state of my mental health and what these awful books might be doing to me granted i could be going insane and just not be aware of it but i do occasionally read a good book and that is the other half of what we're reviewing today pretty little psycho by casey cowser now despite the tabs here i did really enjoy this book and actually they're not that many to begin with even better a good number of these are just for references not actually me criticizing anything and i should get this out of the way but casey cowser is a fan of the channel she actually recommended that i read this i checked out the prologue thought it was pretty good bought a copy and started making notes however i do want to be fair in my analysis and in going over this so it's not going to be me praising every single thing about this book there are some things that are worth criticizing and hopefully i did a good enough job removing my my uh bias so that you wind up with more of an in-depth and reasoned discussion of the book pretty little psycho is the story of makai akira and she has suffered all sorts of different traumas and struggles in her life uh i mean the book opens with her parents getting murdered in front of her and it kind of goes downhill from there she's basically a high school girl without any sort of a support network to help her out even her grandparents who she lives with are distant task masters i think is the best way to qualify them i mean the grandmother's sweet and innocent but the the grandfather is like have you done your four hours of chores today even after school so it's like what social life and after she transfers to a new school it looks like it's going to be the same old crap all over again because the bully from the last school followed her to this one as well as the rest of the bully's gang so akira is getting ready for uh another year of isolation and putting up with everyone else is [ __ ] when she meets uh calorie calories not only new to the school but new to the area and has no idea about any of the cure is past so akira actually has a chance to start anew with this girl which is awesome but after a tragic incident at school results in one student's death akira is accused of murder and the only ones who know the truth are akira and her new friend kaori so what is akira to do with this is she supposed to reveal the truth which will make her life even worse or forge ahead and construct a web of lies to try to preserve the one good thing in her life that being her friendship with calorie and the book has a lot of things going for it the characters are believable the universe feels pretty fleshed out and lived in each chapter feels like an episode of a show many ending with a very dramatic cliffhanger that makes you want to keep reading in fact one of the things that i actually ask the author about is whether or not anime really had an influence in writing this book because from my limited understanding of japanese culture through anime i picked up on a few things that happen in this school that wouldn't normally happen in say an american school things like people referring to each other by certain titles like students would call each other uh miss or mr there are two different sets of shoes one for walking to school and another for walking around inside school small things like that not huge revelations and if you're not familiar with them you're not really going to be missing out on anything because they're like little little small touches that just finish the overall product i also got to say i really like the cover because it's still kind of ambiguous i mean it's it's nicely drawn there's actually a really good sense of perspective in it but you've got uh akira the main character standing on this bridge with a bloody bat and you're not you have no context what's going on with that moment is she a brutal murderer is she covering up brutal murder did something else happen what's going on and that kind of mystique just really draws you in and i mean if the cover alone can get you to ask questions then the illustrator did a fantastic job and the illustrator is apparently christine moral so credit to her i should also point out that my favorite books tend to be thrillers or at least have thriller elements within them and this is a pretty good thriller now this is somewhat grounded as in they're like there are no supernatural elements and i can believe that everything in this book could actually happen now that being said there are certainly plenty of times where it's on the very edge of believability like characters will do things just because it's dramatic and because i want to encourage people to read this book and check it out for themselves i'm actually going to have a time up here this is going to be the skip to time that will jump you straight to the 64 squares review so and it's going to stay up there so if at any time you think this sounds like a good book that you want to check out jump to that time whatever it is and you'll go on to the next review but why don't we check this book out to see what it did well and where the author might be able to improve for next time so this opens up with a prologue when akira is just 8 years old living in tokyo as the sun set over the city of shinjuku tokyo a young girl only 8 years old stood in the bathroom of a small apartment it was nearing her bedtime as she tended to her nightly routine of brushing her teeth she was a playful upbeat and carefree child and as such it wasn't unusual for her to make goofy faces at herself in the mirror if only to make herself laugh as she messed around though she caught the reflection of her mother who had just walked past the bathroom door granted this prologue itself is not terribly strong now it's not awful as far as presentation but it is a little direct because it kind of tells instead of shows what's going on the cornerstone rule to never violate when writing is something which does get better as the book goes on i promise it almost feels like the prologue was written separately from the rest of the book in terms of overall quality like that one was finished up and declared polished and then the rest of the book was given uh six seven eight nine different drafts slowly improving over time as the author honed her craft akira is a young child living with her parents and her older brother when apparently the yakuza break-in and kill the parents and leave the kids alive which i thought was a little weird like knife got witnesses i mean i guess it's nice of him not to murder the children if only a little plot convenient i mean we wouldn't have a story otherwise anyway eight years go by and akira and her brother had to move in with their grandparents her brother has since moved on to become a cop in tokyo and is not seen for the rest of the book apparently he shows up in later books so i'll leave that for now but life with the grandparents is not easy as i've said before akira doesn't really have a support network especially when she has to deal with kita the schoolyard bully who followed her from her last school and is intent on making akira's life hell already getting into trouble on the first day tisk tisk tisk keita said although after getting no response she leaned forward and placed her hand firmly down on akira's desk demanding her attention she glared for a moment as akira stared at her with genuine fear in her eyes she smirked don't think for even a moment that things will be any different here you're a [ __ ] one of the things that i think this book did really well is the setting up akira's backstory because even though we know what happened to her when she was eight we don't know any of the details between then and now so in that way her character story is written in medius res and for a while we don't really know why keita is such an insufferable [ __ ] there's actually a reason for it it's not a good one but it's a believable one and that's one of the things that the story kind of plays with you is like how innocent is akira like did she actually do something is she actually a psycho as the cover may imply or is kita just a terrible person and the book slowly fills in that backstory as we go along giving you little details and you don't get a full picture of what's going on until about halfway through the story but oh it's it's dark but keita is not the only antagonist at this little school because akira also has to deal with takashi the creepy stalker white knight slowing down akira looked to takashi taking a moment to catch her breath could you please just leave me alone she pleaded i'm just trying to make you feel better i mean it's the first day at a brand new school you should be excited he enthusiastically stated there's hardly anything new about this school it's just more of the same she mumbled under her breath moving closer he reached up and brushed his messy black hair behind his ear it's a new school akira come on it's the perfect chance to change things up and what better way to start things off than with a nice guy like me red flag so apparently takashi's character is based on the type of men who see a girl who was hurt or suffering in some way and feels it is their duty to be a white knight for them uh he saw in her pain and took it upon himself to be the one to fix it even though she constantly begs him to leave her alone they should like me i'm a nice guy finish the sentence he wants sex that's right rushing forward he grabbed a hold of her hands akira i know you don't think of your type but if you just give me a chance i know that i can make you happy feeling his hands on hers anise quickly filled her mind doing her best not to lose her composure and just scream she took a deep breath takashi please let go of me you're blushing i'm not blushing she snapped you look so cute when your cheeks turn all red like that looking down she closed her eyes let go i'll let you go if you promise to let me take you out on a date i'm gonna kill myself if you don't go out with me so takashi starts a little blunt force trauma like screamingly oblivious to the point where i like i'm not sure he's actually mentally registering what akira is actually saying i mean i get the point of why he's there he's the creepy obnoxious nice guy who can't take a hint fine that's a character type and that's not as bad as it gets with him but more on that later it still does feel a little pushed like maybe if the scene had been cut in half and he had just occasionally pecked at her like he shows up sporadically throughout the book and does kind of the same thing just nagging on her for a date or oh just give me a chance i just want to make you happy you know all that kind of stuff and it's believable it's it's not so far out there that i can't possibly see this happen but it's a little front loaded i mean if we're going by dialogue alone and not including body language akira rejects takashi in this one scene like 13 times moving on we finally do get someone that akira wants to meet and this is kaori calorie actually introduces herself at a cafeteria table sees that akira is sitting alone and asks to join and this is where we get some of the better dialogue between two characters because the both akira and kaori feel naturally fleshed out they feel like this conversation feels like something that would actually happen the conversation these two share both displays character and helps open up things with the world around them and unfortunately it's a bit too much for me to really display you'll have to take my word for it this goes on for several pages one of the more important elements though shows up when akira tries to warn kaori about who keita and her gang are kaori says that you know she can try to talk to them and get them to knock it off because it's not cool and akira begs her not to kaori frowned well i don't want to make things harder on you but have you told anyone about her bullying you teachers your parents maybe even the police if she's physically hurt you letting out a deep sigh akira slumped down in her seat i did nobody seemed to care well i need an adult i am an adult akira has a long list of reasons not to trust authority figures and keep that in mind because we will be referencing it later on it's kind of a weak point in the story i mean granted i understand why she feels the way that she does but we'll get to when we get to it moving on we get to see the accident that leads to the rest of the plot and some of the accusations of murder it's during school and akira is late to our next class running around in the hallways when she overhears some voices one being kaori and the other one being another girl named i want to make sure i get this right miyoko myoko is a member of kita's gang so she's one of the bully kids and there's an altercation myoko pushes kaori kaori pushes back the problem is she ends up shoving myoko down a flight of stairs and akira overheard all this and she rushed to kaori's defense to try to help out her only friend and i like the way that this is introduced akira's eyes trailed back to kaori seeing how fearful her friend was as she glanced back down at miyoko she could only imagine her to herself how furious miyoko would be once she regained consciousness although while this was an accident a part of akira couldn't help but feel like this was karma for the years that miyoko had bullied her cracking a subtle smile akira slowly began to shake her head before standing back up quickly wiping her smile away then looking back to her friend it's small moments like this that get you to really wonder about akira's motivation it also helps that they don't know how serious miyoko actually is wounded so they just think that she's unconscious they don't know that this actually killed her they cover the whole thing up and they just say let's pretend it never happened let's just go on our merry way and add to some of the mystery of akira's backstory we get this line where coward is starting to panic over oh my god what do we do should we tell a teacher or something and akira responds with akira locked eyes with her friends don't tell anyone if you tell a teacher then you'll get into trouble all for something she started and if you tell another student then word might get back to someone like keita this is a dramatic shift in akira's character up to what we've seen at this point before now akiro was the timid meek fearful child who just wanted to be left alone and didn't want to stand out in any way now she is actively plotting something to keep herself and her new friend out of trouble but not out of fear this is done out of spite i mean the best they can hope for is that miyoko hit her head so hard that she lost her memory of this incident and and won't go to a teacher immediately afterwards and say she pushed me and i kind of like that i kind of like that akira is somewhat of an unreliable narrator and a lot of that is because we don't know what her past is yet that gets smoothed out later on in the book but up to this point the initial few chapters you don't get a firm grasp on who akira is supposed to be and i mean that's by design and i think it really works for example kita has by this point already accused akira of being a psycho and it's like when you when you figure out the real reason for it it's like that doesn't make any sense but the accusation up to this point makes you wonder who was akira after she witnessed her parents get murdered i mean did she go around and kick puppies as a ten-year-old or something okay that's psychotic don't worry she didn't kick puppies the next day takashi catches up with akira and he does confirm that miyoko did die on the stairs uh he was friends with her cousin but not before he gives us this wonderfully awful line [Music] he starts talking to akira when it's just the two of them and makes a few comments about kaori pausing akira narrowed her eyes on him have you have you been spying on my friend she asked angered at the thought of takashi creeping on kaori as much as he creeps on her takashi frowned no of course not my heart only belongs to you hira nobody else he said placing his hands solemnly on his chest i don't even watch dirty movies or anything staring at him for a moment she let out a deep sigh before abruptly turning and walking away from him following her takashi closed the distance and looked to her with concern honestly i swear that i haven't cheated on you you're the only girl in my heart akira i wouldn't even fantasize about any other girl that's what a woman you're not dating wants to hear now this is something that i think needs to be said a word that i haven't really used in these videos yet is flanderized according to urban dictionary the most reliable dictionary on the internet flanderization is the process by which a single trait from a character is overstated and brandished to the point that it becomes the character's only trait and that's true of a few characters in this book but i think takashi has it the worst like there are layers to other characters uh akira and kaori both have their own levels uh later on we made a character named akumi who's actually pretty uh pretty good keter herself is pretty much a one note bully character but later on in the story we get a little bit of her perspective and some of her backstory and it's suggested that she's a little more developed than you know just the typical anime bully character here's a little word of advice nerd don't even think of applying or else takashi doesn't really escape that though like from the examples i've shown so far it's that's pretty much who he is for 70 80 of the book later on we do get to know a bit more about him and he kind of escapes this bubble that he's trapped inside of but up until then he is really dim not really paying attention at all uh kind of a creepy white knight stalker boy now that still serves the story effectively enough it's i i mean it fits uh in making akira's life hell uh that type of a character does exist in real life sad to say he's just not really dynamic and you gotta get through a lot of scenes like that which are pretty much on repeat from previous scenes he comes in he acts creepy uh sometimes he grabs akira by the wrist or the shoulder and just doesn't get the freaking message now if he were like a tertiary or maybe even a secondary character this wouldn't matter so much but he is in the book too prominently for this to not stand out i don't know maybe he's supposed to turn into something later on in the series but for now this is just kind of a one note oh not villain but one note douchebag but speaking of villains there is keita and she is decidedly evil keita blames akira for miyoko's death kira and her boyfriend yuki ambush akira on her way home from school one day while she's walking with kaori up and her backpack into a nearby canal and then up and akira into the nearby canal a man has fallen into the river and even though kaori isn't attacked she still stands by to defend akira and ask keita what the hell is wrong with her why would she go after akira when akira has done nothing to her and kira shoots back with this glancing over her shoulder kid looked to yuki who was just walking up alongside her she turned her sights back to kaori are you saying you honestly haven't seen the way she stares at you no every girl in school she asks exhaling sharply to put it bluntly makai is a sick pervert who sees girls as nothing more than sexual objects she's worse than a boy because at least boys aren't standing around in the girls locker rooms at school gawking at every girl who dares to change near her she said gagging at the very thought of it do yourself a favor and cut ties with her the last thing you want is to be friends with a depraved pervert like her now this is a turning point and appropriately enough because the next chapter is titled turning point because up to this point i've been working on the idea that maybe akira had done something awful in her past maybe there was some deeper mystery she had done that actually earned keita's hatred and although in keita's mind there was a reason for it it's as i've suggested not a good one which is revealed in the next chapter when akira reveals that she is in fact a lesbian and again this kind of ties in with the idea of akira being an unreliable narrator because even though the book up to this point had been told primarily from her point of view we never got the idea that she was actually like staring at other girls later on after the attack when akira and kaori get back to akira's house akira admits to pretty much everything akira sniffled raising her head once more to look at her friend it's true that i'm a lesbian but i'm not some kind of sick pervert like she thinks i am i don't stare at girls in the locker room or whatever well she looked away i mean sometimes i do but it's not like i'm being dirty about it some girls at our school were just really cute you know but despite this revelation despite this unwanted reveal of keita outing akira this way kaori doesn't care and still sees akira as a good friend so you don't think i'm some kind of freak she asked not at all actually i think you're nice and kaori snickered you're pretty funny too and this reinforces the idea that now akira finally has something in a support network which is very important moving on because now aside from the fact that she has a friend she has a friend who accepts her for being a lesbian which is something that akira's own grandparents don't know about her and the good news just keeps on coming from there because the next day at school apparently kita's father found out what had happened when keita had roughed up akira and thrown her in the or got her boyfriend rather to throw her and her backpack in the canal uh by the way which destroyed the backpack and everything in it and so keita's father forces her to pay for it and akira is given a an envelope of 50 000 yen or about 500 and while at first this seems like it'd be a a windfall especially because kid is also being grounded so oh my god consequences it's wonderful but by this point akira is so conditioned to keita's rage and bullying that she thinks that maybe she should just hand the money back because otherwise keita is going to beat her up all the worse for it which is what we see later on in gym class when uh yuki kida's boyfriend shows up to threaten akira to get the money back apparently he and kita were planning some vacation together and they need the money despite the fact that they were the ones who broke all of akira's stuff in the first place so hey there is an ounce of good news though when uh yuki does try starting a fight takashi intervenes and helps out and ikumi who i haven't really brought up yet another friend of akira's now intervene and one of the teachers stops the fight and yuki ends up getting suspended you lose good day sir so all in all things are actually looking up for akira for a change for the first time in i don't know eight years something i should point out is that there is a police investigation going on to investigate miyoko's death and akira is kind of high on the suspect list so she and kaori sometimes break down and talk about maybe we should give ourselves in just you know get it over with because the suspense is killing me the real threat though isn't the police it's actually keita because [ __ ] be crazy closing the distance between them the assailant moved towards kaori catching her just as she turned around hitting her in the stomach of what looked to be a baseball bat immediately carrie staggered back a step and fell down to her knees coughing as she held her stomach in pain by now akira could see all too clearly who this attacker was turning to look at her wearing the same furious expression as before was nakajimakida in an effort to not only get her money back but to avenge her best friend keita grabbed the baseball bat and decided to attack these two late at night while they were walking home keita chases akira to an empty construction site and threatens to beat the crap out of her except kaori steps in and admits that she was the one who pushed miyoko down the stairs and this sets kira off so she starts attacking kaori akira can't stand for this so she rushes kira wrestles the bat away from her and after having witnessed her best friend getting attacked like this by her worst enemy akira snaps hearing keita's cries akira turned to her bully the girl who had caused her so much pain and watched as she held her head likely trying to recover from the concussion akira no doubt gave her a strange feeling washed over her and soon she stopped shaking she couldn't hear keita's whining anymore and she didn't feel fear nor courage within her with staggered breaths she quickly moved over to kita's side furthest from where kaori was raising the bat in the air akira slammed it again against keita's head and the chapter ends with this wonderful cliffhanger right here looking down at the palms of her hands akira saw the blood that was staining them the only untouched portions being that which was shielded by the bat she held her hands were shaking a single echoing thought that were her mind did did i just kill keita and spoilers but yes she did i had reached out to causer before about what kind of a story this was and even though she said that it was uh it was grounded in reality what she really meant was that it had no supernatural elements within it this moment in the book that keita would attack akira with a baseball bat is unusual but just this side of being unbelievable like i can believe that this could happen and it does help that this is a clearly a fictionalized story it's just on the line of realism but doesn't step over it into there's no way that would ever happen territory that being said the bullying is still pretty extreme the night goes on and akira and kaori make it back to akira's place wash up after the attack try to get their bearings straight uh they also get rid of the baseball bat and we get a little bit more of akira's backstory to find out why specifically kira didn't like uh akira and it's not just because keto was a piece of [ __ ] who just didn't like lesbians although that was part of it but not the only part it turns out that keita actually has a younger sister named ina and when they were younger akira and kita were actually friends and they were at a sleepover together and it was at that sleepover that akira revealed that she had a crush on ina akira let out a deep sigh well see when i say ian and i were really close for me i thought we were closer than we actually were she admitted shaking her head in disbelief i admitted to ina that i had a crush on her during a sleepover we all had and ina was naturally shocked to hear it keita walked in the room right after i told her and she could tell her sister was surprised by something and anna told her what i said and apparently that was enough to end a friendship so kia decided to start tormenting akira after that because you know she was an awful person there's also a moment here that i don't really want to go over because it's very upsetting and let's just say that keita as the book puts it uh was just helping me get over my fear of boys so she locked akira in a locker room with three guys that's uh that's all i'm gonna say on that it's brief and you don't really get a lot of detail going on but it's pretty obvious what's being implied so uh just be aware of that moment's in there keita died too quickly but akira doesn't let her pass trauma wake her down and after revealing all this to a very understanding kaori the two girls actually share a kiss it's brief it's awkward it doesn't really make a lot of sense in either of their minds so it's a pretty good description of a first kiss however we get two moments in the chapter which again add to the unreliable narrator of akira kyrie stays the night to make sure that akira is all right after you know having killed somebody it's kind of a nerve-wracking thing oh except akira doesn't seem to care butting her lip akira slowly nodded in truth she slept like a rock with scarcely a single care in the world yeah i didn't sleep a wink either she admitted and of course when akira runs into her grandparents for breakfast she says that she slept just fine you know i was ready for a nice good day for the weekend and that carries on as akira begs kaori to stay for breakfast because her mother makes the most amazing miso soup but we got a pov shift and now we see things from kaori's perspective kaori watched as her friend helped set the table surprised by how upbeat and polite she was being a part of her wonder if it was just a facade to convince her grandparents that nothing was wrong or if she genuinely was in a good mood now that the girl who would bully her so much was gone forever and it's putting in little questions like that it's writing akira in a way that in some ways might seem inconsistent but there's still a lot of her backstory that we don't fully know there's definitely room to expand from what we've been given but so far this seems not out of character well it's not that this is akira being some sort of uh warped or inconsistently written character it's that we just don't fully know her yet although if i do have to be critical about this moment it's that it shifts point of view in the middle of prose so you go like a paragraph from a curious perspective paragraph from calories perspective with no apparent breaks so it's a bit of a whiplash moment [Music] it's not a universal rule it just makes it a little easier for the reader and to give you an idea of where we are in the story we still have this much of the book left so the girls go back to school life seems to progress a little bit coward still worries about the murders takashi is still kind of a [ __ ] creeper uh ikumi is introduced a little bit more and more and we get some more scenes with her i'm not gonna be talking about her too much in this review because her contributions are like you can't cut her from the book but she's also not the most prevalent character and i'm on a time limit i'm not doing another seven hour long review that was ridiculous however this is a moment where we see a good example of one of the faults in the pros both akira and kaori make their way to school and this is how their class is described the class soon began and much like each day before it things progressed quietly without anything out of the ordinary before akira or kaori knew it the class was over and it was already time for them to depart to their next class although as they went to put their things away akira couldn't help but notice out of the corner of her eye ikumi approaching their desks so this is something that's unfortunately common in the book where you get entire paragraphs describing something that doesn't really matter there wasn't any detail necessary in this class it could have just been a scene jump as the girls are walking to school and then scene jump and then uh there's a kooby in the hallway hey how you doing how was your weekend oh ours sucked we killed a guy it's one of those moments that really sucks as a writer because you really gotta go through and scrutinize everything and ask yourself does this contribute to character plot building the universe is it a particularly necessary line or paragraph sometimes you got to cut an entire chapter and believe me that sucks but sometimes it is for the betterment of the story as a whole listen to your beta readers if they say that something doesn't work or makes sense maybe take that into consideration you get a few more scenes that go by uh one of note is when the last remaining member of kita's gang hideko approaches akira while she's in the shower and takes a few photos with her phone hideku given taunts akira saying that the boys will just love the photos and encourages a cure to uh well maybe if i ruin your life enough you'll do everyone a favor and cut it short yourself so akira's response is to jump hit echo beat the crap out of her i'm pretty sure she breaks her nose and then snap hideko's phone in half understandably let's get secure in trouble and she is sent to the principal's office who decides to suspend her for the day for the rest of the day but no more than that while i can understand where that where that's going i'm kind of conflicted with this moment and a lot of it is to do with as i mentioned before akira's hesitance to go to authority figures for help akira's reluctance to talk to an authority figure or you know trust the police or anything like that is a lot of the reason why the plot works because you know if they simply explain it was an accident to the police and that's the result is oh it's just an accident okay well um pay a fine and don't do it again or something i don't know obviously not that but you get what i'm saying however we never see that reinforced in the book the idea that teachers and parents and police are useless and won't do anything to actually support akira is never something that the pros actually backs up and this is a prime example akira went way overboard in attacking hideko even though i mean it's pretty [ __ ] up when she did we've had a handful of moments where some authority figure is involved and could have gotten akira into a lot of trouble and they didn't [Music] there are a lot of moments where authority figures actually come to akira's defense or shown a great degree of leniency towards her so the idea that going to an adult is a waste of time is never really reinforced the only exception to that being inspector yakovna who is with the japanese police and is actively pursuing akira as a prime suspect in my yoko and kira's murders [Music] and we also get something of a writing mistake at this moment here akira is sent to the principal's office for the attack on hideko and she and principal share this exchange kendaka shook his head all acts of violence are to be reported to law enforcement taking his pen he wrote something down i also highly suggest taking time out of your day to formally apologize to the victim of this incident and her family you might also consider offering to them whatever you can to show that you're truly remorseful for these events fat chance that [ __ ] told me to kill myself before i beat her ass she's not even getting so much as a half-hearted apology for me she thought to herself as she scoffed under her breath i'm going to keep the text up here on screen so you can see what i'm talking about but uh in this moment uh akira is thinking something to herself which if she said out loud would get her in tremendous trouble but the moment is surrounded by quotation marks and uh they really should the sentence should be italicized it is one of those rules of writing thoughts are always italicized or at the very least put inside of single quotation marks at least in america apparently in britain single quotation marks are normal for quotes but they're weird over there [Music] the book does need a bit of editing and not just to smooth out some minor details there are a couple of typos like that sprinkled throughout um it's not grading it it's not awful to uh like onision's almost nowhere near that but the author did state that she uh couldn't afford to get like a professional editor so she did this herself and honestly for a self-edited book it's not that bad you cannot rely on autocorrect for [Music] everything still it is a good idea to get your work out to beta readers if you can because they can catch small things like that and say hey here you used the wrong spelling of two after that though we get the last big plot revelation of the story and that is when yuki jumps uh akira after school when she's alone and threatens to murder her with a knife they're in a part of town which is somewhat isolated so no one would be able to rush to akira's defense in time so akira does the one thing that she can think of and she lies feeling her whole body shaking akira swallowed nervously my friend asano kaori she she killed kita i swear it wasn't me keita was beating me up and kaori grabbed keita's baseball bat and beat her to death with it and on one hand this is distasteful because she's selling her best friend out but on the other hand she's really backed into a corner so you can kind of understand it it also does add to the moral ambiguity of akira's character which i think is right for discussion but after a bit of badgering and back and forth yuki does by akira's story that kaori was the one who murdered his girlfriend so he forces akira to assist him in murdering kaori and a good portion of the rest of the book is akira trying to find some way to get rid of yuki while also keeping kaori alive and considering the fights she's gotten into considering keita considering how deep she has dug herself with the web of lies she has built so far naturally the only solution is to go out and murder yuki i'm skipping ahead a little bit but akira's plan comes down to two parts one is the alibi and two is the actual murder the alibi is that she kaori and akumi are going to have a sleepover together and this is especially important not only because it's an additional witness but ikumi is actually a daughter of one of the police officers investigating the case so she is seen as an extra strong alibi the second part is to convince yuki to meet akira and kaori at an ambush site where akira will instead ambush him go full school days on the guy and then he ran into my knife he ran into my knife ten times have gotten this far without making a lot of anime references kaori does not like this plan though and doesn't want a cure to go kill anybody else even if it is yuki even if he is kind of insane in fact kaori is so desperate to keep akira from murdering this guy that she initiates a brief makeout session unfortunately it's not enough to convince akira to stay behind so she goes out to deal with the yuki problem and it doesn't work not only because yuki is bigger and stronger than she is but also because akira has an unwanted witness as takashi has tagged along to follow her again creepy stalker boy also it's midnight when this is happening so that just makes it so much worse however takashi being the brave white knight that he is comes to akira's defense and tries to fight yuki for her and opening her eyes akira saw what was happening and knew she had to act fast the situation was out of hand but if she could just kill yuki then she could take out takashi and get back to kalri's house before anyone knew she was missing although it took much of her strength she pushed herself up to her own two feet feeling the pain from where yuki had hit her in the leg powering through it she staggered over towards him the knife in hand and lunged at him burying the knife in his lower back yelling out in pain yuki instinctively threw his arm back hitting akira and causing her to stagger away withdrawing the knife from his back before she could recover he swung wildly as he turned towards her it almost felt like slow motion at first seeing him twist around then seeing the bat swing by the way she was already moving back akira thought that in in that split second that it would miss her but as it should have passed her everything instead went black she wakes up in takashi's room wearing takashi's clothes and he says that he had actually changed her out of her uniform and put it in the wash so extra creep factor [Music] but akira is alive and takashi insists not to worry about yuki anymore not giving any details beyond that akira gets back to kaori's place around five in the morning and says sort of tells a lie of a mission by stating that she couldn't kill yuki which is technically the truth kaori thanks akira for not taking the violent route and the two come to a revelation about each other offering a wide grin akira lightly chuckled that's very true although i wouldn't mind having you as more than just a friend i'd like that too just never worry me like this ever again kyrie said as she moved forward and embraced her friend tightly i don't know if my heart could take losing you not after everything we've been through biting her lip nervously akira hesitantly wrapped her arms around kaori so um does this mean we're girlfriends now calorie nodded yeah of course it does and there are sort of a couple except i think this is a moment where one of many actually where the author's use of the unreliable narrator really works because calories intentions here as akira's quote-unquote girlfriend don't feel genuine not to me anyway they they feel more like kaori's doing this to keep akira in line like if you murder that boy i'll break up with you she's hesitant she isn't as direct or open with akira but akira is so overjoyed with this because she's been attracted to calorie for quite some time in the book and the idea of not only being open about her sexuality but actually having a girlfriend is so incredible to her that she doesn't even question it questions for the sequel i suppose now that the plot against yuki has largely been foiled most of the rest of the book is settling down and tying up a few loose ends in a lengthy resolution the biggest questions that still remain though mostly have to do with the relationship between relationship between akira and takashi that and tying up everything relating to the deaths that have happened so far one little nugget of information is when akira realizes that she actually left her backpack at takashi's when he rescued her after everything went down with yuki she goes back to retrieve her things takashi is not there but his mom is she lets akira inside to takashi's bedroom where akira discovers a stalker box i will call it it is loaded i'm not going to read the passage because there's only so much i can actually reveal from this book which will allow me to keep this video on youtube but inside the box is a series of clandestine photos as well as a pair of underwear that akira has been missing since middle school so yeah that's the kind of guy takashi is but the police are still hot on akira's trail especially one inspector yakovna like to the point where he is openly assaulting her to collect evidence from her backpack which i don't want to believe is acceptable procedure in japan but i don't know but takashi decides to step up one last time as the good nice guy that he is and he says that he will take the fall for the murders i don't want to say he's going the distance as far as white knighting goes but that's the best way to put it [Music] and this kind of comes in as a twisted moment because while this definitely does work out for akira's favor uh she is clearly manipulating him into doing this he smiled at her i love you no matter what happens i'll always love you akira forced yourself to smile i haven't always been the kindest towards you but honestly you've grown on me takashi stepping closer to her he reached out embracing her tightly almost feeling as if he were on the verge of tears i guess this is goodbye then akira shook her head as she hugged him back don't think of it as a goodbye more like an i'll see you later and it continues pulling away akira's side thank you again for doing this for me happy to do whatever i have to if it keeps you safe and sound he said before letting out a deep reluctant sigh say once i'm out of of prison do you think maybe you'd be willing to be my girlfriend closing her eyes akira practically had to force herself to nod yeah sure of course she said looking back at him and that pretty much works takashi walks off to a police station confesses to everything takes the fall uh it even gets uh inspector what's his face yakovna to uh to back off and it looks like akira's life is finally going in an upward direction she even gets an old a visit from her uh first crush ina who tricks akira into walking to the construction site where kita died and then inna stabs akira in the chest all i wanna do is have some fun unfortunately akumi was nearby overheard the whole thing over paradina and got a cure to a hospital so the last chapter is akira in a hospital bed she's got calories she's got a kumi she's got her grandparents she's actually surrounded by something of a budding support network and it's this nice happy moment even as inspector yakovna stops by to say i know this is actually your fault i know you are actually at the center of all this but my bosses are telling me to back off so i guess you got away with it and that is the end of the book and the ending left me a little conflicted but conflicted in a good way one of the ways that i viewed this book is if it was asking us the question uh how far are we willing to allow someone who's experienced trauma to go how much leeway are we going to grant them as far as bringing any sort of balance in their life because a a good portion of that of everything that's happened in this book was akira just reacting to changing stimuli in her life she lies about uh an accidental death at school well okay i mean it's not like she was directly consciously responsible for that she killed keita well okay keita was attacking her first so this was kind of self-defense mixed with blacking out a little bit she lied to yuki to you know and told him that kaori was actually responsible for kira's death well okay but she had a knife up against her throat when that happened she actively plotted against yuki to kill him it's like well i don't know i mean maybe this is getting out of hand it feels like there's there's kind of a a gauge there that you can bring up to an audience and ask where at what point does she cross the line are we willing to look at her past trauma and say okay because you've experienced this you're allowed to get away with that some people will probably say she's not allowed to get away with any of that because she was wrong from the start other people will say all of it is okay because they're her life was so miserable up to this point and everything that uh made it worse was these uh bullies or the the outside stimuli and there's a discussion that can be had with that and i think that is the mark of a really good book i mean despite the problems there there are typos there are errors this book does need to be polished up a little bit but in terms of of creating discussion i think it does a marvelous job now that was one of the questions that i actually asked couser if that was an intended message in her work and she said that she was more going for quoting directly the message i aim for in the first volume of the series and to a lesser extent the entire series is that the people in society we see as monsters aren't always such don't judge a book by its cover which is what i was aiming for with this story the book is called pretty little psycho a name i chose because you think a girl like akira and uh you might think that she's gonna be some pretty little girl in a wholesome sense think about how her grandmother looks at her she believes her granddaughter is a good kind person but when her life uh takes a turn for the worst akira starts making bad decisions those poor choices lead her down a path that gets progressively worse and worse exacerbated by her continuing to make poor decisions this in the eyes of those around her makes her look crazy insane like a monster or even psycho she's not a bad person she's most certainly not a good person but she is someone who life has dealt a losing hand but she's choosing to stay in the game refusing to fold because she hopes in her heart that things will improve and and i liked that i did like that akira was not a totally good person or a totally bad person she definitely comfortably stays within a line of moral ambiguity after a while when she starts building all these lies upon lies it feels like she starts lying not out of necessity but out of habit like at one point near the end of the story uh she gets a replacement phone and she lies to kaori about where she got it and it's largely unnecessary in a lot of ways it's like a very minor loose end that she didn't even really need to tell a lie for but she still lies about it anyway and again i think that that is the sign of really good writing because uh akira's character her positions her actions are ripe for discussion of how far is too far when did she take it too far did she take it too far is she really is she a more a good person more of a bad person what do you think the other characters in the book did a lot to support akira's position like the way the reader sees her kita was an out and out [ __ ] yuki was straight up evil takashi was 10 shades of creepy kyrie was sweet and innocent ikumi was good and supportive not just emotionally but also physically saved her life at the end of the book air the grandparents sort of served as sort of extremes on how parents generally should act the grandfather was extremely just i i know i didn't talk about the grandparents but the grandfather was extremely disciplinarian and uh insisted that akira finish her tours every single day the grandmother was you know sweet affectionate doting wanted to make sure that akira was as emotionally stable as she could be there's definitely a lot of thought and caring that went into the development of this book now as i have uh stated a few times during this review this is going to be part of a series in fact this is book one of apparently ten now i'm a little apprehensive about that because i'm worried that the premise is going to get stretched a little too thin but cowser has storyboarded the hell out of this and we've got like full backstories on everybody for everything going all the way back to the 1920s even so i don't know maybe it will work out and the whole series will actually be brilliant we'll just have to see i know i'm looking forward to it because i've already bought the sequel [Music] but while this was fun and again i do recommend you check it out the following book started out as kind of hilariously dopey and became so god damn grading the forensic certified public accountant and the cremated 64 squares financial statements a title which is so long and stupid i can't actually remember it was a mistake created by dwight david thrash cpa fcpa cgma this book is barely a book i've got this bad habit every time i read the worst thing ever i think to myself okay there's no way anyone can write something worse than this i did it with all of the onision books i did it with empress teresa and now i'm going to stop asking that question because the universe is seeing it as a challenge for me um so there are many different ways you can frame something as you're reading it many ways that you can think to yourself what is this trying to say why is this here what is the message i have bounced around several different ideas one being this was written as a joke this was transcribed from the insane ramblings of a four-year-old these are court documents that were accidentally published do you know what it feels like to have a headache so bad that your eyeballs are trying to evacuate from your skull because after reading this book i certainly do if you gave a six-year-old two cans of soda and promised them the biggest slice of cake they've ever seen in their life if they told you in a fun story the insane gibberish that they spat out of their mouths would be more coherent and more entertaining than this oh yeah i was nice with the last book i will not be nice with this there's not too much that i can really research about this guy there's not too much really out there i did find his linkedin page so that's something but he doesn't seem like he stands out that much apparently he like the protagonist of this story he is a uh certified public accountant and a forensic public accountant and uh i don't even remember what cgma stands for it's it's in here but i i'm lazy he even has a youtube channel to help advertise his books which flabbergast me because they've got an insane amount of views and almost no interaction with the community so i think what happened is he attempted to play with the algorithm by putting his videos on repeat uh like a few hundred thousand times he's got like almost no comments and no likes or dislikes on his videos it also doesn't help that his videos offer no description of anything that goes like he says his name he says the title of the book i dwight david thrash certified public accountant forensic certified public accountant chartered global management accountant limited liability company wrote the forensic certified public accountant and the organized organic cash cows dairy farm for every book sold i'll donate a dollar to this charity which you know granted okay that's cool he's willing to share his profits with a church for like some kids um thing so you know props to him for that if he's actually following through so that's an extra dollar that goes to charity he seems like a decent guy from everything that i can see so i i want to make it clear i'm not going after the guy for like any personality faults he's not like el james who is so amazingly arrogant that she could give satan lessons but it's pretty clear going through this book that he was born at work one day and he inserted himself into this ridiculous story to try to prop up how awesome he was book has this odd sense of delusions of grandeur like the author sees himself as far more important than the grand scheme of things than he really is it's like that episode of scrubs when the janitor helps the doctors by holding a patient down then brags about it for the rest of the day like he's some kind of hero the protagonist of this book has such an amazing unearned sense of accomplishment and oh that is without even talking about the myriad of writing mistakes that go on in this thing like if we were talking per page then this thing is worse than empress teresa and to give you an idea of what that even looks like pages three and four of the story almost the entire page is highlighted and that would have been the norm if i decided to go full out because there are there are there's a mistake in almost every single sentence in one way or another uh either there's a typo or there's some sort of a grammatical error repetition words that aren't used correctly the author seems like a decent guy but way out of his depth as a writer it's like watching a kid try something for the first time you don't fault him for not being great and because the author doesn't seem to have an unearned ego there's this odd sense of charm that the book has i don't really want to mock him more like guide him in the right direction so he can do better i mean i'm still going to add some crude jokes because you know i'm an [ __ ] but not because i want to hurt the guy so before we get into this i want to point out that the protagonist is a cpa fcpa cgma all that stuff so you know he's an accountant and a an accountant as a protagonist is perfectly viable it could work out just fine look how many times uh john grisham had lawyers as protagonists or michael crichton with the same and maybe you can write a story where the forensic accountant has to go through and figure out some math thing to get at the bottom of some masterful scheme or something i can see that working this ain't it as you can see from the gross adjusted acid tabulation in column j the net value of the land acquisition was actually zero now if you go to the file marked devaluation of capital income we can review the weight it also doesn't help that right at the start uh we get an author's note that the characters are fictional even though they appear to be real no they don't this book is based on real accounting and forensic accounting which is neat if you can add that degree of realism to your world your characters your story except accounting is not really interesting like it's bringing this up with the same seriousness as you know this murder mystery is based on a real murder and that's not what we're getting in this this is what we get is more like a janitor cleaning up a stain on a floor which is like based on real cleaning techniques like okay cool but why should i care that's a lousy hook speaking of hooks the opening line is not convincing the voice inside of me told me this was going to be a tough case to crack oh good one line in and the protagonist is crazy have i gone mad i titus uno certified public accountant forensic certified public accountant and chartered a global management accountant had just gotten back from gathering evidence from the headquarters of an international multi-billion dollar company 64 squares located in vancouver british columbia canada that was you guessed it a 64 foot skyscraper that was a single sentence all of the 64 floors of the 64 squares had several offices that had great windows with an excellent view of vancouver british columbia canada [Music] so i think it'd be uh pretty obvious at this point that this story takes place in canada there's also a reason i didn't really summarize this book beforehand like give you an idea what we're getting into and that's because there's nothing to say like if i did summarize this i'd give away 80 of this so here's what goes on a terrorist not actually a terrorist but that's what he gets called in the book uh has blown up a building called the 64 squares building the protagonist is one of the people investigating he is a cpa that was brought on to look at the financial impacts that blowing up the building has now i am not a cpa and i'm pretty sure i could tell you it it doesn't look good jim i i forgot to point out cpas do have a good role in society so any crap i throw in their direction is not meant like offensively cpas accountants do a job that i am very incapable of doing i suck at math this is a terrible representation of what accountants are supposed to do so apparently 64 squares is used as a high-tech information storage for companies all around the world so the loss of this building has a significant international impact for all sorts of unnamed companies and the person responsible for this is labeled the cat burglar terrorist which does not work as an accurate description on any level a cat burglar terrorist that is the name this criminal has been given so that everyone that is involved in this case will know that this case is the one that is being discussed had broken into the high-tech office building and blew it to rubbish those of you who have been on the internet for longer may um be aware of the eye of argonne story and the eye of argon challenge which is to read it and see if you can get through it without laughing i submit to you that this is a better challenge i have read the eye of aragon i've read the whole thing it is not nearly as hilariously bad as this at least until chapter four but we'll get there when we get there fraud or an accounting procedure breakdown had occurred so 64 squares called in the best forensic certified public accountant titus uno cpa fcpa cgma which just so happens to be me myself and i [Music] i'm going to go through this once to give you an idea of what we're getting into because frankly this is amazing the god i don't i've got options for what i want to pull here because it doesn't really matter it it solidifies my point it's just um this is a small portion of the entire paragraph here this is a small portion of the entire page a forensic certified public accountant is called in when fraud has been discovered evidence is collected so that the guilty party is prosecuted i titus uno certified public accountant forensic certified public accountant and chartered global management accountant have been so successful that i am honored to be able to hire three people to work with me as members of my four forensic certified public accountant team including myself i titus uno certified public accountant forensic certified public accountant and chartered global management accountant decided that i titus uno certified public accountant forensic certified public accountant and chartered global management accountant needed a global designation to be recognized and respected worldwide so i titus uno certified public accountant forensic certified public accountant and charter global management accountant earned the chartered global management accountant designation that is one sentence [ __ ] so you may notice that the protagonist repeats his name and titles an unnecessary amount of times in fact the previous page he says it seven times i don't know why maybe he's worried that you've got an extremely short attention span and doesn't want you to forget but there is a reason for it you may think that that is the insane incoherent blathering of a madman why would he repeat that gross display of word vomit so many times well he's an accountant so you gotta look at the numbers how many times does he say it in the book 64. what is the building that blew up 64 squares how many squares are on a chessboard 64. what does all of this mean hell if i know the author's kind of the madman he doesn't even say it 64 times he says it like 93. i don't know why i counted i'm a masochist it also really doesn't help that the protagonist uh has a a very inflated sense of self not bragging but i titus uno i'm not going to read all that graduated at the top of my class at college my mentors helped me so much that when i titus uno more stuff i'm not gonna repeat graduated i had so many connections with people that i could count on for the rest of my life the way he presents it i was i was so convinced that this was a joke at first like you know he was trying to make something satirical and kind of stumbled along the way but you know an attempt was made but it's by the end of it i don't think that was true there are so many glaringly obvious mistakes going into this and he he treats himself with such an unearned sense of importance in what is supposed to be a terrorist attack so while you know the actual law enforcement guys are you know doing the hard investigations he's crunching some numbers after the fact from some safe distance so where's the action this is more like some guy got bored at the office and wanted to give himself a pick-me-up so he write he wrote some bs action story with himself at the center bob was just an ordinary licensed window washer but when terrorists attacked the building he was the only licensed window washer who could save the day but like any good book the author decides to introduce the protagonist let us know who he is so we can empathize with him as he puts himself into danger now i titus uno blah blah blah will share information about my family life i am still single but on the lookout for a nice christian wife having a nice christian family and friends are what makes life great so if uh any good christian women are looking for a nice hunk of man meat you can check this guy out he also plays trumpet in the local community band plays first trumpet at the church orchestra plays piano for fun none of this of course will ever come up again in the story you know those little touches to add on to the character really work best somewhere later on in the book when you actually have a nice moment to calm down between action or drama scenes settle down get to understand the character's perspective a little bit more shoving it out in the open like this so blatantly does not work i shouldn't even have to say that but apparently i do the task is an overwhelming task but we also need to know a little bit more about the story and why the attack was so bad you know aside from the obvious a building has been destroyed in this case the cat burglar terrorist had the nerve to take all the backup software disks that had the financial statements information stored on them before blowing up the 64 square skyscraper building i mean yeah he blew up the building but he had the nerve to take some backup hard drives i bet he didn't even water the plants before he blew up the building oh that jerk but we can't get into the story quite yet you see before starting so however i titus uno blah blah blah will have to get a soft drink poured into a glass because i am thirsty and food in my stomach because i am hungry i am not entirely convinced that this was not written by an ai that had no idea what it was doing greetings fellow humans human fellas i don't even know where we are in the book anymore he keeps bouncing between things he's trying to establish and that at the core is the problem with this book as we go on you'll notice he will establish something he will set it up and he will never finish it this book is like 85 percent set up and maybe 5 conclusion don't ask me what the other 10 is i don't know it's steaming [ __ ] and this sentence right here is where the author pretty much tells you what 80 of the book is going to be first there are so many people in this puzzle such as i'm not reading all this it's there you go pause if you want to check it out yourself the majority of this book is setting up who all these characters are and briefly explaining a few factoids about them but nothing that actually pertains to the investigation the police are doing or his investigation for checking out the financial statements of the building the 64 squares financial statements will have to be reconstructed the 64 square skyscraper will have to be rebuilt if possible and this cat burglar that blew up the 64 squares skyscraper will have to be prosecuted the financial statements will have to be resurrected like a phoenix flourishing your sins to give an interesting image good idea sounding like an idiot while you do so not so much it has to be determined if 64 squares skyscraper can be rebuilt the insurance investigator will help determine this fact and that's fine except this is pretty much the author unintentionally admitting that his character's investigation has nothing to do with the terrorist attack the author tries so hard to insert his characters in alongside the law enforcement investigation and it it never works not even a little like these are the groups of bumbling jackasses you give some sort of an idiot task to to keep them out of the way stay put there you know what i mean but titus uno masterful badass of all things numerical can't solve this case alone so he needs a team to help him and he has taken on three people to assist him drew sampson deena hope and veronica jackson and if you forget who all of those people are don't worry they actually don't do anything in the story i mean they take action they do things but ultimately none of it leads to anything so it's like it's impressive in how useless they are it is very important that everyone work together though to solve this crime because it is their job to help i am trying to emulate this writing style ironically and it is not going well it is important to stay true to the course and to try not to waste time tracking down useless information that will not be useful in tracking down the cat burglar terrorist and ultimately if the cat burglar terrorists get a guilty verdict and therefore be sentenced to prison for the crime time wasted is costly to any entity that desires to make a profit in their business drinking game take a shot every time the book is stupid alright so first off is drew sampson a private investigator that enjoys going undercover to gather information both tangible and intangible are useful so thrash's method of introducing characters is to front load information to give us a whole bunch of stuff early on and then he never does stuff with it later like this for example drew sampson has a beautiful wife jill sampson and two children simon sampson a boy who is 10 and delilah sampson a girl who is eight on a scale of one to ten how would you rate your pain you know i could be contributing to society and instead i'm reading this goddamn book thresh also seems to think that every single character's marital status needs to be brought out into the open as if that's some way of significantly identifying people like no joke i'm pretty sure every single character we get to find out if they're single if they're married and if they are they usually are spouses or kids names it's not like any of it's ever interesting it's not like you get uh any kind of far-reaching explanation for who some of these characters are or or their spouses veronica jackson is happily married to her husband carl jackson for 24 years they have a daughter rose jackson that has just graduated from college with a master's degree in accounting wait that right there that's boring it's instead don't tell me some banal numbers that i could just be replaced by anything and don't tell me something that has no weight or significance give me something that stands out say veronica jackson was married to her high school sweetheart who exploded in a freak mining accident but yeah that's that's pretty much the the team drew sampson a private investigator dana hope computer programmer and genius and veronica jackson and even though it never really outright states that veronica jackson is basically their secretary she books appointments for people to meet and then you get chapters that you can cut out entirely this is something that should be summed up in like a paragraph or two or sprinkled out throughout the rest of the book creatively chapter three forensic certified public accountant team spy gadgets and i'm sure there's a certain degree of devices and programs that would be very useful for a cpa but somebody please tell me why would they need global positioning systemships night vision binoculars that deer hunters use and supersonic listening devices like those used at football games earpieces can combine with shade recorders to communicate with each other polygraph machines wire taps are these guys accountants or are they actually a spy agency i mean i admit i don't have the best grasp on what a cpa would do but i don't think they're out there tracking down master criminals and fraudsters using telescoping contact lenses i'm not making that up it's in the book i'm titus uno [ __ ] name stuff and privilege to tell you about a secret new gadget so i hope that you will promise that you will not tell anybody else about this top secret gadget good you will not tell anybody else about what i am about to divulge to you it is contact lenses that can zoom in on a dime that is 100 yards away and you can read the writing on the face of the dime this guy repeats his title so much he's like a less fun version of nylock from tome ford i am uh then there's this stupid line the protag breaks down the uh tools that they use for some reason and then he says this high technology is exciting to use because spying on people is fun one thing that perplexes me about this is i don't know who this was written for generally when you read a book it's clear if it's meant for a child audience young adult audience adult audience take this for example cameras to take pictures and videos a picture is worth a thousand words that statement is so true videos are picture after picture it can be used to prove that someone is lying and turn a case in another direction there are video and photo cameras everywhere and a great detective can locate photo with great ease there are even cameras that take pictures of drivers as they run red lights why do you talk that way the writing style is so infantile that it sounds like he's speaking to a child audience but he's speaking about topics that no child could possibly be invested in a couple pages ago he actually breaks down uh the the reason for monitoring a company's expense reports and liability listings no kid is going to read that and either understand what's going on or find it fun to read about so by chapter four i had given up a lot of the reason why i don't have as many tabs as i could because there there frankly there should be tabs on as i've said almost every single sentence i felt like analyzing this would be a an abject waste of time going over empress teresa and breaking down why that didn't work was amusing going through trigger warning and the mr and explaining why those stories were [ __ ] was fun what do i really get if i break down every single sentence and explain why the word choice is wrong why setting things up is faulty why the repetition the mindlessly needless repetition i would have an easier time analyzing a phone book so rather than try to break down what the story does wrong because the answer to that is everything i thought it would be better if we just go over some amusing lines and setups to display thrash's full ineptitude as an author again i don't want to like send any [ __ ] his way but jesus man you knew better so we get confirmation that the 64 squares building was named so because of chess and it turns out that the 64 squares building also hosts some international chess championship and it is about as stupid as it is tawdry the championship games are played outside of the 64 squares corporate lawn there are corporate booths set up like a carnival such as ring toss i'm sorry this is written so poorly that i my brain's trying to correct it as i go along let me start over the championship games are played outside on the 64 squares corporate lawn there are corporate booths set up like at a carnival such at ring toss shooting the basketball pie eating contest a dunk the person and of course grilled food is available to be sold i am not doing a good job these corporate games are the highlight of the tournament [Music] excuse me why sellers go around yelling peanuts popcorn cracker jack the chess player have to tune that out i do not know how they tuned them out but it does not seem to bother the championship chess players the game is played on the long chessboard with live people representing the chess pieces this adds a really different chess game instead of using regular chess pieces if a piece is killed this is a non-violent version of chess the person just leaves the board let's make a run for it come back fools protect me the ink in this book was written with tranquilizer juice anyway i have no idea why chess was ever mentioned because it's never brought up again get used to me saying that and we get the next chapter the first of the protagonists investigation they go after the insurance investigator for 64 squares some guy named quick swift yes really quick is his nickname shortened name for quicken or quick books and if you're not familiar with those they're accounting programs to do accounting on it let me tell you this guy has an interesting backstory so that was a [ __ ] lie quick swift decided he wanted to be a professional singer quick swift packed up his belongings and headed into the direction of his favorite singer that destination was nashville tennessee the home of the grand ole opry the whole problem is that the supply of singers is greater than the demand for singers while quick swift was looking for singing jobs he had to work as a waiter like every other profession it is hard to get great paying singing jobs after two years of not getting a singing job with high pay quick swift decided to sell insurance oh you know the the natural progression that all singers go through the next page you actually open up 10 separate sentences with this guy's name quick swift quick swift quick swift it gets so tiring repetition like that is mind-numbing it slows down your reader's interest so fast what you've got to do is use variety change up the length of your sentences change up how you introduce your sentences change up the beginnings of your sentences for god's sake repetition can be useful at times never like anything you ever see in this book but quick swift isn't the only person with a jackass name other characters include agent davey bond of the fbi agent supervision of the cia and agent spider webb of homeland security i'm sorry the homeland security you've got a few normal names like greg templer and pam valentine but i just gotta know why these incredibly stupid if you're gonna name a character that poorly they're going to wind up as a batman villain we also get a breakdown of who and what the vancouver police and vancouver fire and rescue services are the vancouver police and vancouver fire and rescue were ready to jump into action this is what they were trained to do in s terroristic attack the vancouver police and the vancouver fire and rescue work well with each other so that this hazardous area becomes safe the police apparently also gathered video from around 64 squares to determine that the cat burglar guy parachuted out of a plane and landed on the roof of the building this is one of the only sentences in the first 75 pages of the book or so that establishes a fact that is relevant to the story and there's this weird thing that the the author does with almost all of the chapters from here on out and for like un until the climax climax and it's to reassess everything in the chapter up to this point like so this chapter is all about the police the fire and rescue what they do and some tangential link to the cat burglar guy and what he's been doing so the protag will say this titus uno name junk and the forensic certified public accountant team these jackholes must interact with the vancouver police and the vancouver fire and rescue they will do that they will say um the team has to interact with this guy to determine something [Music] and i forgot to bring this up earlier but for some reason uh it's never made clear the fbi the cia and the dhs are all helping this investigation in canada now i can believe that to a point like in terms of material supply uh information trading making sure that uh this kind of stuff doesn't happen again or that this jackass gets this capricorn guy gets caught okay but there's a lot of jurisdictional issues in play here like the cia might trade information but by and large i don't see them doing anything to really help with this case so i don't know why asians are on site the book never actually explains what they do or how they help maybe it's just trading information and and trying to support the investigation somehow a lot of that is speculation on my part what thrash tries to do with all those characters is it gives them some sort of a unique identifier which is good except the character never amounts to anything outside of these individual chapters the point that he comes up with is usually really stupid and it doesn't mean anything in the long run because after these characters are introduced we almost never hear from them ever again this isn't even clever enough to be considered a red herring this is just wasting my time agent davey bond is an excellent sharpshooter with a rifle and even better with his gun is he trying to suggest that rifles aren't guns and that's what confuses me i'm sure he meant handgun instead of you know just gun but rifles are much easier to aim than handguns agent davey bond may miss one out of 200 shots sometimes one out of 300. that is where agent davey bond got the nickname of davey i think that's supposed to be a reference to davey crockett but i'm not 100 sure oh davey that is awful but at least his nickname isn't as demeaning as the next one agent supervision got her nickname super because agent supervision is super at her job plus it is pretty funny that's not funny and then there's the last one from the homeland security the author keeps referring to the department of homeland security as the homeland security that is not a federal department that is a concept stop it the ceo of 64 squares was some jackass named jack sheriff star because apparently he's got a cowboy fetish or something now this is the first of four chapters that break down some of the higher ups in the company you've got the ceo the cfo chief financial officer the ceo the chief operations officer and cao chief accounting officer for some reason the author felt the need to break down what a meeting was now i can prove i believe i can prove that large sections from these chapters are copied and pasted among each other and it's not just because they're insanely repetitive it is also because they include the same typos they try to meet when all four of them can attend this every other week officer meeting because all four are responsible for some many people and so much happens every two weeks that is why they meet bi-weekly these meetings get very details and informative and usually lasts about two hours with three breaks by the time these meetings are completed all four of the elite officers of 64 squares knows what they need to achieve before the next meeting that will in two weeks what the [ __ ] is that every single one of these characters gets that exact same setup the other thing that gets repeated in these chapters is what the rest of the team does so you've got titus i honestly have no idea what he does in this book outside of narrate and testify in court but his team does take actions for example you've got the private investigator guy who bugs these characters offices and the programming hacking lady hacks into their computers and sometimes sets up wiretaps and then the secretary sets up appointments for them to meet these characters i don't know everything that a cpa will have to do so i don't know if all this really works but i do have to question not only where do they get the justification or the authorization to use wiretaps in people's offices like this but also what office the building [Music] exploded anyway chapter 13 is where i have done something that i have never done in any of these reviews before and i skipped chapters everything was so soul-crushingly repetitive and dull that i could not stand to go through any more of it so that's why these pages have no tabs because i cheated and skipped and you know what i don't care [ __ ] you i'm tired of your [ __ ] i am willing to bet that it was all the same horse [ __ ] [Music] so instead we go to chapter 17 the reason for the explosion here's a hint you don't find out the reason for the explosion until the last chapter was there means motive and opportunity the cat burglar terrorists definitely had the means to blow up the 64 square skyscraper building because the explosives were designates and the 64 squares skyscraper building there can never ever be a great motive for blowing up the 64 square skyscraper building uh that's not how motive works you're thinking reason it's different learn words sir saying i don't know i just felt like it that would be a bad motive however the motive does make sense to the cat burglar terrorist because the cat burglar terrorist executed the premeditated criminal act causing 64 squares skyscraper building to be cremated and causing the financial statements the also be cremated okay and i've just got to say this because the the author has gone through the entire book getting this wrong was it done by a powerful terrorist group whenever a building is blown up it is considered a terroristic attack on the whole world not just the country or town that the skyscraper building or any type of structure is blown up and destroyed first off that's not a complete thought second off that's not true and not just because of the obvious because demolitions are a thing that's not an attack but because for it to actually be an act of terrorism it has to have a political angle to it after reading all this i can assure you that there is no political angle to this the whole thing is this drawn out revenge schemes like overblown revenge scheme amazingly like how the hell so to call him a terrorist is he's so inaccurate and this just keeps spiraling the drain hilariously as the protagonist desperately tries to leech off of any kind of relevance that the real investigation has some minor accounting weaknesses might actually be the cause that made the cat burglar terrorist blow up the 64 square skyscraper building keep that line in mind you're going to be laughing at it again in a few minutes eventually the protagonist finishes detailing the results of somebody else's work and we finally start to get some actual concrete proof and and facts about this case everything up to this point up to chapter 21 page 94 out of like 105 or so has been speculative rumor mill gossip [ __ ] of about various minor characters that have little to no actual relevance to the plot at hand but eventually in this chapter we actually get some descriptive detail about what actually happened with the explosion that destroyed the building granted it's stupid as hell but it's something the cat burglar terrorist parachuted onto the roof of the 64 square skyscraper building after landing on the roof the cat burglar terrorist took the four explosive ropes that had explosive devices that would be at all 64 floors on all four sides of the 64 squares skyscraper building so is this to imply that he actually had rope with bombs that were able to cover 64 separate floors on four sides of a building not only is that drastic overkill at that point i have to question where did he get the bombs this raises so many questions you don't just build hold on i gotta do some quick math you just gotta carry the three it's not that simple 256 bombs tie them to ropes and then just casually blow up a building he also broke into the building um opened up some safes where some top secret stuff was stored i guess he also stole some hard drives and then went to the roof parachuted off that into a getaway car drove off and blew up the building and the reason why is so much dumber than you think it is go ahead try to guess what you think the motive for this is why would this guy go to all this trouble to take down a building for no apparent reason let's look at the facts of the case this is a multi-billion dollar corporation that houses top secret level information from multiple separate uh corporations and governments and tech firms all over the planet and in an earlier line that i skipped over because it genuinely doesn't matter the cao the chief accounting officer pam valentine might have actually been a part of the motive for this pam valentine the cao or chief accounting officer is an excellent and possibly the best certified public accountant of all time it sounds odd but this could be the motive for the cat burglar terrorist attack it might have been a botched kidnapping attempt the cat burglar terrorist might have thought that pam valentine was in the 64 square skyscraper building and had planned to blow up the 64 squares skyscraper building to cover their tracks yeah it's something else that's actually not brought up we don't know if anyone was in the building when it went down so we have no idea what the kill count here is so we finally get to the court case and the uh ruling so we find out a little bit more about the cat burglar uh he's some douchebag named clef treble which i guess is supposed to be a pun so titus uno gets to testify in court as an expert witness since he is a forensic certified public accountant his testimony is considered expert testimony that is what makes being a lay witness so great once a statement is made it is fact in the case that sounded awesome to me that is why i titus uno became a forensic certified public accountant you know i've come across a lot of psychos but not as [ __ ] boring as you i mean you are a real boring [ __ ] sorry and he goes and thanks his mentors and i just gotta give this sentence because it is wonderfully stupid without their knowledge and skills i would not be the forensic certified public accountant that i titus uno all these title bullshits again am so the protagonist steps into court and he sits down at the witness chair and the prosecutor sharp hatchet yes really asks him mr titusuno blah blah will you please tell the court how the financial statements of 64 squares has changed statements of 64 squares are now after the 64 square skyscraper building was blown up by the accused they're [ __ ] jim i'm gonna go on a limb and assume that they're in pretty bad shape since you know the building exploded also what the [ __ ] is with that sentence structure dude proofread your [ __ ] and the protagonist actually goes into detail like with numbers and actual figures to explain like financially how this impacted the company the financial statements have materially changed because of the 64 square skyscraper building was blown up first the balance sheet has been changed by the 64 square skyscraper building being blown up by the accused the assets and owners equity are materially overstated by three billion dollars because the three billion dollars 64 square skyscraper building is currently has a value of zero dollars this will be the value of 64 square skyscraper building until the 64 square skyscraper building is rebuilt that's not the end of it he keeps going like that actually impressive and how bad it is and i cannot in any depths of my imagination try to explain how that is in any way materially linked to the plot the the terrorist act terrorist act the story at large i do not know why this character is narrating this story vaughn from final fantasy 12 was a more relevant protagonist in his own story hell let's be honest bond from final fantasy 12 is a more relevant protagonist in this story hold on everyone hates you the way it should be and after that gigantic swath of nothingness we get the guilty verdicts yes multiple because this cleft trouble guy wasn't the only douchebag who was arrested i'm not going to explain the reason for this at first i will explain eventually but i want you to witness this with the same kind of confusion that i went into it because it doesn't make sense cleft treble a 64 squares employee that was fired by peter graham the ceo or the chief operations officer was guilty of terrorism of a building he was sentenced to life in prison terrorism of the building is not a thing however he was not the only one charged you see peter graham the coo who got rid of cleft trouble by firing cleft trouble is not an is innocent party in this case he was sentenced to 20 years without parole no detail is given in this chapter beyond that you don't know you don't even understand why he was charged at all it's like all he did was fire a dude which is not an arrestable defense like at worst you can get sued for wrongful termination henry roy who was the new head of the human resources department and was unaware of all the facts of the employees of 64 squares henry roy trusted what peter graham told him and so henry roy worked with peter graham to get rid of clef trouble was sentenced to 10 years without parole they also arrested a security guard who escorted cleft trouble out of the building he was sentenced to two years for j um sentenced for two years because you know doing your job is wrong now and there was also a police officer who was somehow involved in like a trespassing thing you know he was light up with a warning but again i don't even know why that was brought up at all it is not until the last two pages where any context for any of this is given for it to begin to make sense [Music] anyway you got your reasons down there okay good they're all wrong i have no idea what you typed but you're wrong not only has the motive for this not been established anywhere else in the book it is so illogical that it wouldn't actually come to anyone's mind unless you were as insane as this guy don't delete it i want to see how many different ideas people could come up with for this because i am certain that all of you came up with a better reason than what it is actually in this book clef treble who had worked at 64 squares as mentioned above was familiar with the 64 square skyscraper weak points 256 explosions all at once that'll do it clef trouble had proposed to pam valentine weeks earlier cleft treble could not bear to not being able to step foot on 64 squares again and visit his friend pam valentine at her office in 64 squares peter graham who was also in love with pam valentine and knew that cleft treble was in love with pam had the police issue a criminal trespass without a reason as mentioned above in the court the reason that this guy got fired was because some douchebag was in love with the same girl that he was and like apparently they were pretty far along i'm assuming if you're gonna propose like that then again one of the other characters in this uh proposed to his wife after talking to her for two hours so god only knows what thrash thinks normal relationships look like and even though he was still free to pursue a relationship with this woman and at the same time sue the company for you know false termination this cleft trouble guy decided to blow up the building putting who knows how many people at risk and who knows how many people out of a job because you know that's that's a sign of a real stable personality oh i got mildly inconvenienced in one of the world's easiest false termination lawsuits ever guess i'll start building bombs so even though there was nothing stopping this guy from seeing his girlfriend fiance i don't even know what he still decided to overreact in the most extreme manner i think i've ever heard of honestly at that point this valentine woman dodged a bullet by not marrying this guy at least i hope she didn't i i honestly don't know there is talk that since the 64 square skyscraper building and the 64 squares financial statements were both cremated not what that word means 64 squares might change its name for a new beginning image skipping a sentence that name will be the phoenix okay cool name but [ __ ] stupid meaning behind it and the last paragraph is so riddled with all of these these geez you just gotta listen to this any business can issue someone a criminal trespass just because they want to and they have every right to tell the person what to do that makes me sick businesses shouldn't have the right to tell people what to do even though they have the right therefore since the police did issue a criminal trespassing to the cat burglar since he could not go back into 64 squares he decided to blow it up you know like any rational adult would no one likes to be told they cannot do something such as go to visit his girlfriend at her office dude just meet her at the starbucks down the street it's not worth the fight it is legal for people to be mean this all could have been avoided if everyone would have been nice to each other checkmate another case solved till the next case that is unsolved my team and their spy equipment will be ready set up the board for another case wow um wow i'm gonna stop looking for the worst thing ever because i found it and even though there is a whole series of books after this do not recommend them to me i will not read them this is garbage all right gonna go through a few notes here because there's plenty of bad lines that i uh did not include by chapter two i was willing to declare that this book was at least on a technical level in terms of sentence and story structure worse than empress teresa i stand by that stupid line drone cameras wow video cameras in the sky book will spend an entire chapter describing things that can be summed up in a paragraph or two so at one point the protagonist describes that his team was hired to locate a missing college mascot and my question that is why it's like oh my god my car's been stolen better call a financial consultant apparently they were called because it would lead to lost revenue but i don't think that works stupid line lost games meant lost revenue and lost revenue the missing mascot case was labeled as the missing mascot case titus claims that polygraphs helped find the truth that is a damn lie they only react to people's uh emotional reactions not the truth that is why they are not admissible in court this book has more typos than i thought a fully functioning adult could produce i just have one note that says these names are ass stupid line uh the explosion was a terrible crime because nothing positive can come out of this attack on innocent people and private property it's this kind of infantile writing that makes me wonder what thrash thinks his target audience is or how he talks to people in real life lots of authors myself included sometimes write the way we talk if thrash talks the way he writes then he has got to be the most condescending [ __ ] on the planet this stack of papers is just cut and paste [ __ ] the novella several chapters don't even set anything up they propose something basic like we need to find out the timing of this event then follow through with generic non-specific drivel or speculation that we've already read a dozen times i feel like attacking the author for writing this mess is like attacking a small child after his first day in art class screw you little jimmy i've wiped my ass with better artwork than this uh it takes 92 pages before a question that is raised in any of these chapters is finally answered this may be the only time i've ever seen a story where the side characters get more description than the protagonist in fact the protagonist gets almost no description outside of being a cpa i think it should be pointed out that clef treble was fired apparently had high level access since he could get into top secret level uh safes inside the building and after he was fired his access was never revoked and the the combinations or whatever to get into the safes was never changed this was the biggest waste of time there are no characters there are a myriad of typos the pros is infantile there's nothing to keep you invested the plot doesn't even exist and i can sum up 80 of this book in one sentence cpa with delusions of grandeur inserts himself into someone else's investigation and spends the entire book describing things like the reader's an idiot if there exists a book out there worse than this one keep it the [ __ ] away from me alright that is it uh two book analyses out there for you one awesome one very much not awesome so hooray i wish i could say that i've got bigger and better things planned for the future unfortunately i don't because right now i am still in the middle of reading ready player two it's not going well it has some of the worst world building i've ever seen but you're gonna have to wait for the video on that to find out what i mean so that's the video hooray thank you for watching the whole thing if you did or at least the 64 squares section if pretty little psycho does sound like something you'd want to check out definitely do there will be an amazon link in the description of the video and now i've got to figure out how to end this video um support indie authors support small businesses and take care of yourselves i'm gonna go read more bad books because i don't know what else to do with my life [Music] apparently [Music] you

Channel: KrimsonRogue

Views: 214,286

Rating: 4.9656401 out of 5

Keywords: Book, Review, Comedy, Accountant, Financial, 64 Squares, Thriller

Id: DytIPdE8PAo

Length: 115min 4sec (6904 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 09 2021