Audition

Audtion to me is a great exploration of the unreliable narrator within a horror-thriller setting. Aoyama falls for Asami lightning fast and becomes blinded by his feelings for her. We see her through his eyes, a beautiful, vibrant angel of a young lady. To us, there is nothing to doubt. And yet everybody around him finds her suspicious, and warns him to be careful or even get away. But aside from a couple of weird things which in everyday life I wouldn't necessarily flag as particularly alarming, we do not see any reasons to doubt her. Because we see her through the eyes of a besotted middle aged widower. 

For a moment I just kinda forgot I was reading a horror. It spends the entire book following the setup for Aoyama losing his wife, working through his grief, going through the fake auditions for a movie that mask his true purpose of finding a wife, meeting Asami and falling for her. 

It's very clear that he and the friend that gets the audition set up are not nice people, too. And then everything gets turned up to 11. It's wild.