Today, I am going to try to talk about a book I wish I could hold close to my heart and to my memory for ever. It contains everything I love. I don't want to give away to much but, it will hit right where it aims: your belief in humanity.
Kokoro stopped going to school after she suffered heavy bullying. One day, the mirror in her room started shining. Attracted to the mysterious glow, she gets close to the mirror and sees a castle inside. When she touches the mirror's surface, she enters the world of the
Lonely Castle in the Mirror.
A strange Wolf Queen and six other kids like her are waiting on the other side. The Wolf Queen announces the rules and the purpose of this place which is to find the Wishing Key so one of them can be granted a wish. And just like that, the story begins...
Mizuki Tsujimura cleverly adresses school harassment by weaving it into this fantastic world, letting her characters grow slowly, giving them the space to learn to know one another, to experience being together and understanding each other. This book goes way further than the fact of bullying. It is also about loneliness, about comfort, about how time can fix things (literaly, about healing and about friendship.
As the reader, at first, I was not convinced. I could not really get into their stories, it was very well written but I still felt out of it. And then, little by little, I got so engrossed with all of them. I realized I too did'nt want to see them leave this castle. I wanted them to be able to meet up in real life, I wanted them to feel truly happy, and to be together. The japanese way of writing I am guessing, felt sometimes a little bit off. It felt like they all cound't communicate properly. But that was the thing, they were learning, and so was I, with them.