The Dark Maidens is structured like a meeting of the Literature Club at St. Mary's Academy for Girls, a mission school in Japan. It begins with the current club president, Sayuri Sumikawa, opening the meeting by explaining its rules and purpose. This is both one of the club's infamous "mystery stew" meetings and also the first meeting since the club's previous president, Itsumi Shiraishi, either jumped to her death on school grounds or was pushed.

"Mystery stew" meetings are one of the club's traditions. Each member brings an ingredient to add to the stew. At some meetings only edible things are allowed, but at others, such as this one, inedible things may be added, as long as they aren't unsanitary, like bugs or shoes. Each member must eat the stew in darkness until the pot has been completely emptied. While everyone is eating the stew, members take turns telling stories. The theme, this time around, is Itsumi and her death.

I bought this knowing only that it was a mystery and that its author is a woman - my brief check for English-language reviews prior to hitting the "buy" button didn't turn up much. Happily, it turned out to be a quick and interesting read, despite its flaws.

I disliked the format, at first. Sayuri's introductory section was odd and a little awkward, as she described a room the club members she was speaking to should already know and discussed the death of her best and closest friend in what seemed to be a remarkably calm way. Readers were given no sense of what was going on in the room or how Sayuri or the other members were behaving unless Sayuri put those things into words. Fortunately, the stories the club members told were more traditionally written, and I eventually adjusted to Sayuri's parts.

The first character to tell her story was Mirei, one of the school's few scholarship students. After that came Akane, the club member who preferred baking Western-style sweets over reading, then Diana, an international student from a small village in Bulgaria, then Sonoko, a student aiming for medical school who was also Itsumi's academic rival, and then Shiyo, one of the club's first members and the author of an award-winning light novel. The book wrapped up with a story and closing remarks by Sayuri.

The first story, Mirei's, made it crystal clear that this was not going to be a book about female friendship and support. No, these girls were going to verbally tear each other to shreds - apparently in a very neat and orderly manner, since there was never any mention of outbursts and denials in the breaks between stories (I assume there were and it just wasn't included in Sayuri's text, because I cannot imagine a bunch of girls keeping silent as they're each accused of murder).

The second story added an interesting, if not terribly surprising element, as it directly contradicted the first story. From that point on, I started keeping track of details that came up in more than one story, trying to sort the truth from lies. Literally everyone in the room was lying, but what they were lying about and why wasn't always easy to figure out. Also, some stories had more truth to them than I originally assumed.

I can't say whether the translation was very accurate, but it was pretty smooth and readable. I flew through this book like it was nothing, and I appreciated the way the differing styles of some of the stories reflected the characters. For example, Shiyo's story had a very bubbly and conversational style, while Sonoko's was more detached and stiff (at least at the beginning).

As much as I enjoyed attempting to sort out the truth and lies in the girls' stories, this book definitely had a few glaring flaws. The biggest one was the mystery stew. It wasn't believable in the slightest that the club members would willingly eat the stew when they all thought that one of them was a murderer. Heck, one of them even suspected that

 
I also had trouble believing that the girls would have been as open about some things as they were. For example, one girl shared that she'd been in love with Itsumi, while another girl admitted that she'd lied to Shiyo about having read her book. Several girls said things they had to have known that others in the group would recognize as lies. Why didn't they worry about being called out for it?

Another problem was that Akiyoshi seemed to have trouble keeping certain details straight, or perhaps hadn't thought them through very well. For example, Sayuri said that the usual rule for "mystery stew" meetings was that club members could only bring edible ingredients and that the rule had been changed for this particular meeting, and yet only a few paragraphs later it was clear that inedible items had been allowed in the past. Also, club members were supposed to eat the soup "in total darkness," and yet the room had 1-2 lit candles in it (one by Sayuri, to allow her to put ingredients in the pot, and one by the spot where members were supposed to read their stories). There was enough light for Sayuri to notice that one girl's face had paled, even after she'd left the storytelling spot - hardly "total darkness."

Despite the book's problems, I had a lot of fun with it and could see myself rereading it in the future. Next time, I think I'll start with the final two chapters and then go back to the beginning, just to see if everything really does fit together.

Extras:

Several black-and-white illustrations. One of them shows all the girls at once. When I tried to attach names to faces, I realized that there wasn't enough descriptive information in the text to do that. I know what Sayuri and Itsumi looked like, because they were both introduced with illustrations, but, as far as I can tell, most of the others were never described.

Rating Note:

I feel like I'm probably giving this too high of a rating, because, oof, some of those flaws. But I really did have a lot of fun, especially during the last couple chapters, and I decided to reflect that in my rating.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

The Vault of Dreamers was an interesting book to say the least. I didn’t love it to bits and pieces but it was definitely something that got the wheels turning in my head. It’s a book written more to mess with your mind than to actually provide answers so if that’s not your thing, you may want to give this book a pass.

Rosie Sinclair isn’t the brightest thing out there but she served her purpose. That said, there were times when I just wanted to shake her. She could be so impulsive at times and didn't really think things through. Impulsiveness does not help uncover a dystopic plot, in fact, it’s more likely to get you caught.

This was one of the reasons why I spent a good chunk of the beginning being skeptic, I kept on wondering when the other shoe would drop and the book would start reading like a generic dystopia. Luckily, that didn’t happen. That isn’t to say it was unlike a typical dystopia, because it was, in some ways, but it also managed to stand out on it's own.

Linus and Burnham were interesting additions to the story. At first I thought it was going to be some weird love triangle but I was incredibly thankful that that wasn’t the case. I think what upset me about Burnham though was the fact that there was just not enough of him. There were some major things that he could have been a part off but wasn’t. I was also really curious to know what he knew and was upset we never really got to find out. With Linus, I was just never really a 100% sold on him. He was the love interest too so that not a good thing. I was always a little suspicious of him and I never quite felt like he genuinely cared for Rosie. I think a major reason for this could be that the romance was not nearly as well developed as it could have been.

It didn’t come out of nowhere and the L word didn’t pop out of nowhere either but there was just this awkwardness to it. I felt like there was no real transition into a relationship and that’s what made it hard for me to ship the two as a couple.

The world building was a tad disappointing yet really intriguing at the same time. I think the fact that we were kept in the dark was vital to the story but as someone who tends to be more than a little curious, it can be hard to not know all the facts. I closed the book with so many questions on my mind yet at the same time I wasn’t angry that the author didn’t give us more information.

The saving grace of the story was the interesting twist that popped up. I had no idea that the author would choose to go down that road and that’s what made the story stick out to me. It’s what set it apart from all the other dystopias out there. It made me question some of the things the author had already laid out and made me come up with my own theories about what was going on and just made the book a lot more interesting. The twist also made our narrator unreliable which is always fun (but we may have different definitions of fun).

I think the ending was interesting too. In most other cases, I probably would have been really angry but it worked with the context of the story. Given the things this story is dealing with, an easy solution wrapped up with a bow tie just wouldn't work.

Given the way it ended though, I feel like a follow up would be interesting but at the same time, I am content with the way things ended.

Really, if you're just looking for a fun book for a rainy day that is bound to mess with your mind, why not give this a shot?