From the excerpt, I was really interested in this story and what had happened to the girls in this pop group to cause such a rift and then such a tragedy. Unfortunately, after the excerpt, the book takes an excruciatingly long time to get back around to the original mystery, while in the process trying to build up a new mystery and try to get the reader interested in the new mystery. I honestly was annoyed by the new mysteries popping up and only cared about what had happened in the past. Every time the narrative shifted to the past part of the storyline, the book recaptured my interest, but when it was in present day I was a bit bored. It took me a long time to get through this book because of this. Finally, when we reached the end of the book, we come to find out that this is a modern retelling of the Swan Maiden tale, and I was not a fan of how this retelling went. As a teen, Ayashi no Ceres was one of my favorite anime, and no Swan Maiden retelling is going to make my feminist side rage like that show did. However, I am giving the book 3 stars, because it is not the book's fault that I already have a high standard for the Swan Maiden story. I'm sure that others who read this, and have no read or seen any other Swan Maiden version, will flip over the storyline.