Summer, Fireworks, and My Corpse by Otsuichi

Let's start off by issuing a SPOILER WARNING because I will be spoiling the entirety of the title story. I was trying to figure out why sometimes I'm willing to spoil things and others I'm not and I think when I really like or dislike something, I have a tendency to want to discuss it more, whereas if I don't have strong feelings either way, I want to get to the point and move on.

Summer, Fireworks and My Corpse is told from the point of view of a 9-year-old girl named Satsuki, who happens to be dead. This is an interesting premise, until you realize her corpse isn't present for half the events in the story and...She's not a ghost. So how is she narrating details she didn't even witness?

Before her death, Satsuki was sitting on a tree branch with her friend, Yayoi, while waiting for Yayoi's brother, Ken, to join them. Yayoi confessed that she had feelings for her 11-year-old brother, at which point, Satsuki did, too, so that her friend wouldn't feel embarrassed. In what must have been a fit of jealousy, Yayoi pushed Satsuki from the tree branch they were sitting on and the fall killed her. Ken ran to them after hearing the branches snap and asked his sister what happened. Of course, she lied and said Satsuki fell, then begged him not to tell their mother. Ken agreed to help his sister hide the body and from this point on, it's a constant back and forth of, "Oh my God, we almost got caught, we'd better find a new place to hide the body." Yayoi is terrified and Ken is excited, taking joy in covering up the death of Satsuki.

Conveniently for the two children, a series of kidnappings had occurred in the region, and they hoped that people would assume the same happened to Satsuki. One night, while attempting to dispose of the body for good, 19-year-old Midori, who happened to be a friend of the siblings' family, caught them in the act. Instead of turning them in, she told Ken it would all be taken care of, as she's "quite used to" getting rid of bodies by now, revealing that Midori was the one kidnapping the children (who all resembled Ken...). She stashed Satsuki's body in the ice cream factory she worked at, with her own victims. There, Satsuki would play Kagome, Kagome with them. Good to know that, at least in death, she was able to make some decent friends.

This story was so frustrating to read because 1. The children were almost caught numerous times and Ken always found a way to talk his way out of it, while acting incredibly suspicious and 2. They got away with their crimes. Summer, Fireworks, and My Corpse goes on for way longer than it should and it's incredibly repetitive. I was actually planning to read all three stories in the book and review them, but I was so turned off by the first one that I could not motivate myself to read the rest of them, so I decided one was enough and maybe one day, I'll come back to the book and read the other two. But I doubt it.