About the Book:
The novel that lit the Japanese publishing world on fire: From a breathtaking up-and-coming writer, a twenty-first century Catcher in the Rye that brilliantly explores toxic fandom, social media, and alienated adolescence.
Akari is a high school junior obsessed with “oshi” Masaki Ueno, a member of the popular J-Pop group Maza Maza. She writes a blog devoted to him, and spends hours addictively scrolling for information about him and his life. Desperate to analyze and understand him, Akari hopes to eventually see the world through his eyes. It is a devotion that borders on the religious: Masaki is her savior, her backbone, someone she believes she cannot survive without–even though she’s never actually met him.
When rumors surface that her idol assaulted a female fan, social media explodes. Akari immediately begins sifting through everything she can find about the scandal, and shares every detail to her blog–including Masaki’s denials and pleas to his fans–drawing numerous readers eager for her updates.
But the organized, knowledgeable persona Akari presents online is totally different from the socially awkward, unfocused teenager she is in real life. As Masaki’s situation spirals, his troubles threaten to tear apart her life too. Instead of finding a way to break free to save herself, Akari becomes even more fanatical about Masaki, still believing her idol is the only person who understands her.
A blistering novel of fame, disconnection, obsession, and disillusion by a young writer not much older than the novel’s heroine, Idol, Burning shines a white-hot spotlight on fandom and “stan” culture, the money-making schemes of the pop idol industry, the seductive power of social media, and the powerful emotional void that opens when an idol falls from grace, only to become a real–and very flawed–person.
Rating:
2.75/ 5 ✨
Review:
As someone who’s currently very into kpop, I relate to a lot of stuff that Akari was obsessing with. Buying albums and merch, watching contents on different platforms, spending a ton of money on concert tickets, and making a shrine for your ‘bias’ is such a common thing in the kpop community.
This book gives us a small snippet on the rise and fall of an idol and the effect it has on certain people. It also tackles the well-known ‘cancel culture’ that our generation seems to be obsessed with. Did you know that you could be ‘cancelled’ even with such mundane things? It’s a crazy world out there. Akari was part of that population who has her mind preoccupied with nothing but her oshi. Akari spends an enormous amount of money on merchandise even though she does not have the financial ability to. But what’s the saddest part of it was that she doesn’t have any other identity other than following her idol’s progress. She lives a bare minimum life and doesn’t excel in school because all she wanted to do was give praise to her idol.
I think the title of the book really fits well. There are those types of fan who take being a fan to a whole new level. The story of Akari is not new to me. If you search it up, you would find a story of a young girl in the Philippines who stole money amounting to almost two million pesos from her relative’s business just so she could buy merchandise online.
Sometimes as fans, people tend to forget that the person you’re idolizing is also human. They’re not gods. They also make mistakes and make terrible decisions in their life. If a person wants to be in a relationship, then who are you to say that they can’t because you’ll get disappointed or jealous? They have their own lives.
Overall, the book was very short and easy to read however, I don’t think the main problem was solved in the end. Akari’s problems were barely confronted by her family and the ending was lackluster. There was a huge potential but I felt like I was let down and was unsatisfied with entirety of it.
Favorite lines from the book:
“In the same way that a night of sleep put wrinkles in a bedsheet, just being alive took a toll.“
“But this world where I showed up with my half-made-up persona was a kinder place.“
“Phones and TV screens have kind of a grace built into their separation, like the distance between the stage and the audience. It was reassuring to sense someone’s presence at a certain remove so that the space couldn’t be destroyed by interacting directly, or the relationship ruined by anything I did.“
P. S. Thank you so much, Fully Booked for this copy. I really appreciate it! ♡
Unravel the Story 