a fun murder mystery novel spinoff of one of my favorite animanga series of all time <3 when L said justice has power which means it has kindness kindness i could have cried

 I realized that I’m not the greatest Death Note fan anymore, but I wanted to read Another Note for completionist reasons, and I wanted to see more of L. I originally gave it three stars but looking back at this light novel now, it feels more like two stars since there was barely anything I liked about it. 

The plot is a simple murder mystery plot. Former FBI agent Naomi gets the mission to figure out who the murderer in the BB murder series is. Kinda unvoluntary, she gets the help of a guy called Ryuzaki. Those characters are all connected to the main series of Death Note. The mystery was okay, I guess. The pacing was not the greatest which can be seen in the fact that one third of the story is spent in one room where the characters just combine things which became boring quickly. Some of the conclusions they make are quite out of the blue as well. The only thing I really enjoyed about this light novel was the twist towards the end that

Ryuzaki was not L but Beyond. His motive was interesting as well, same goes for the fact that he has the eyes of a Shinigami

. But besides this, I was not really interested in the solution of the mystery. 

The writing style was okay, and the emotions of the characters were portrayed well. There were some things I found a bit weird though, for example how Naomi speaks her thoughts out loud so that the readers can hear them too. The book also sends some weird messages with sexism at some points and emphasizing a character looking through the underwear of a 13-year-old girl, urgh. 

Naomi was treated so badly in this novel. I liked her in the main series but she’s terrible here. She’s so judgmental and just rude towards L; at one point she says that she would rather kill herself than look like him, wtf. Talking about L, his characterization is okay. It was a bit annoying that every sentence had to emphasize what a genius he is, even if he’s just able to read Roman numbers. 

Fans of the Death Note series and edgy 13-year-olds that like creepypastas – I can say that; I was one of those once – will likely enjoy Another Note but it’s nothing for me anymore.