I bought Strange Houses with my eyes.

That cover. The bold red. The floor plan. The little boxes of information extending from the architectural drawing. It looked like exactly the kind of strange, visual mystery I would enjoy. I love a puzzle, and the idea of uncovering a mystery hidden inside the floor plans of houses sounded like a wonderfully unusual reading experience.

Unfortunately, the cover was more interesting than the story.

Uketsu’s Strange Houses is a short Japanese mystery built around unsettling architectural plans, unexplained spaces, and the possibility that houses can reveal something much darker about the people who lived in them. The premise is genuinely intriguing. The execution, for me, was considerably less so.

I read the entire thing in one sitting, partly because it’s only 197 pages and partly because I kept waiting for the mystery to become the clever puzzle the cover promised.

*Spoilers will be hidden and labelled so you can choose to read or skip.

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Where did I hear about this book:Bookstore

Curiosity or Awareness: Curiosity

Would I read it if no one was talking about it? Yes

What I want from this book: I hope for an interesting mystery with a unique reading experience.

The bold red color with the floor plan caught my eye. The additional information, like the title, tagline, author, and translator, being separately listed in different boxes seems to extend from the floor plan, making the whole thing feel very cohesive and interesting to look at.

Color Story

Black and white and red all over (or so the old joke goes). The limited palette provides ample visual punch. The composition compartmentalizes each element, but the color ties it all together.

Typography Notes

Clean, medium-bold, sans-serif in varying sizes adds to the clean, crisp design of the Strange Houses cover. The type choice and application suggest a modern thriller or mystery, with a distinct design aesthetic.

Genre Signals

The type, palette, and composition are suited to a thriller or mystery. The Strange Houses cover content does say “The chilling Japanese mystery sensation.” There is little doubt it is supposed to be a mystery.

Hidden Details

None that I specifically noticed.

Mood Check

Design-forward mystery.

Beyond the Dust Jacket

The paperback is nicely formatted. The illustrations are clear and well labelled. Most of the format of Strange Houses is delivered in dialogue. These are set up much like you might expect to read a play, with the speaker’s name followed by a colon, then an inset of the actual dialogue.

Did the design affect whether I bought the book?

Absolutely. The cover and interior design of Strange Houses was clearly very well designed and makes it a lovely book to add to your shelves.

“Author” (presumably Uketsu) writes for a newspaper(?) and follows up on a weird lead about a Strange House. The character is not characterized – no personality, no traits, just questions and suppositions.

Kurihara is an architect and mystery buff the author reaches out to. He has truly wild ideas about some unusual house details. How anyone might have drawn these conclusions is hard to say. Read as a conspiracy nut.

Katabuchi is the connection to the case. She supplies all the real information that fleshes out the story, revealing why the murder houses were built.

The writing is very mechanical and linear. There is little to no subtext or nuance. The whole thing started out reading like a draft of some humorless sketch comedy and ended like a melodramatic soap opera.

The author leads the readers through the “mystery,” but there is never room for the mystery to grip the reader, no reason to care about the characters. It’s very clinical.

Check the floor plan to make sure your potential new home wasn’t built for murder.

What Worked:

• The premise seemed interesting
• The illustrations were easy to follow
• Plot was unique-ish

What Didn’t Fully Click:

• I didn’t care about the characters
• There was little tension, suspense, or clues for the reader to untangle a mystery
• The writing was flat and dull

Overall:

Disappointing.

I read Strange Houses in one sitting. There are few pages and a lot of pictures, so it didn’t take long. The idea that the floor plans of houses would reveal mysteries seemed like such a fun premise. I love visual puzzles, so I thought this would be a great fit for me.

However, the storytelling was almost juvenile. What I mean is the structure was presented as: This thing happened. Then I saw a thing. Then I asked a question. Then I drew this wild conclusion….etc. There was no character development, no setting development, no subtext. I wrote myself a sticky note on page 41 that said: “I know this is supposed to be spooky, but it’s giving British sketch comedy and I’m having trouble taking it seriously.”

There were no emotional stakes, and the mystery was “solved” early on, with the details revealed for the rest of the book. I was disappointed.

Read if you like:

• Short books
• Mysteries that walk you through every step

Skip if you dislike:

• Flat prose
• Melodramatic, far-fetched mysteries

I read Strange Houses during the Playing Card Reading Challenge to fulfill the reading prompt: Read a book under 200 pages.

It could also fulfill the prompts:

Read a book with a map (assuming you count floor plans as maps; I do).

Read a translated book.

Have you ever picked up a book because the cover or premise seemed perfect for you, only to find that the actual reading experience didn’t live up to the promise?

May your life be as full as your bookshelf and as long as your TBR list.

Happy Reading!