Book Review: “Book Girl and the Scribe Who Faced God, Part 1” by Mizuki Nomura

Warning: If you have not read “Book Girl and the Scribe Who Faced God, Part 1” by Mizuki Nomura, don’t read this review if you want to avoid spoilers. If you don’t mind spoilers or you already read the book, feel free to read it!

I’m back with another book review, and this time it’s “Book Girl and the Scribe Who Faced God, Part 1” by Mizuki Nomura! It’s the second-last book in the whole series, and I can’t believe I’ve read this far! Here’s a summary of the book so we know what it’s about:

“”I am Tohko Amano. As you can see, I am a Book Girl.” Two years have passed since Konoha’s first encounter with the mysterious girl who thus introduced herself. Guided by this Book Girl who loves books so much that she devours them, Konoha has overcome a lot. But the day of Tohko’s graduation is approaching and…suddenly the Book Girl lets slip a confession of her betrayal. Stunned, Konoha is further rattled by Ryuto: “Tohko Amano is gonna disappear.” “You should learn who Tohko Amano is.” What is the secret Tohko has kept hidden? How will Konoha and Tohko’s story conclude?! The first act in the final episode!”

Given that this is a ‘Part 1’ as the book title indicates, it’s not a whole full story like the past books were. This also means that there is indeed a cliffhanger and I will have to expect resolution of the plot of this story to happen in ‘Part 2.’ Because of this, plotwise it did feel a bit unresolved at the end of this book, but in order to properly rate the plot of this series finale, I’ll need to read “Book Girl and the Scribe Who Faced God, Part 2” first.

What I liked about this book was the fact that we finally get to learn a lot more about Tohko, our main heroine! We learned a couple things about her throughout the series, but it was nice to see that she had a lot of spotlight in this book compared to past ones. We learn about her family, about her ties with her family friend Ryuto, and apparently Konoha is a LOT more important to her than originally let on. I can’t discuss too much of this or else I’ll spoil the whole book, but I can say that Konoha is regarded as her “author” several times through the book.

I felt really bad for Konoha throughout the whole book, given that he has this pressure of being Tohko’s “author” being forced on him. He has good reasons for why he doesn’t want to be such, given his whole situation with Miu as revealed in past books, and he struggles a lot with this throughout the whole book. I’m happy to see that Kotobuki is supportive of his decision. I like the relationship dynamics that were developed between Konoha and Kotobuki, and how they tried to help each other out when things got rough.

Speaking of Miu, she makes a brief reappearance in the book, and it’s relieving to see that she’s much better than she was during the last time she was seen. The continuity nods they give to past books, such as with the situation in “Undine” as well as “Wayfarer’s Lamentation” are a greatly executed in this book as they were for the past books in this series, and this time is no exception.

Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for Ryuto’s character development in this book. He comes off as really mean, given his harassment of Kotobuki and Konoha early on in the book as well as his insistence that Konoha is “Tohko’s author.” Though it’s understood that it comes from Ryuto’s reasoning that he wants to protect Tohko and try to help her, he still really comes across as unsympathetic for this book. I hope this improves in “Part 2.”

Overall, I would rate this book 4 out of 5 stars!

This is mainly due to some lack of character development and the unresolved plot (though hopefully that’ll be fixed after reading Part 2). If you haven’t read the rest of the Book Girl series before this one, I highly recommend that you do because in terms of character development it would be helpful, even with the emphases the books have on their continuity nods.