Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free advanced copy of this book to read and review.

Interesting premise and story but unfortunately not likely to appeal to our Manga readers; would be good for a collection which has an active readership in more shojo-oriented works due to the 'slice of life' mystical nature over an action-adventure.

Love the concept. Could not put the book down. Good for book lovers. Don't want to give spoilers but immediately looked to see if there was more in this and and now looking forward to the next light novel.

I like the premise here. Our main character can hear the voices of books and talk to them. I think most literature nerds would dig the power set. The voices of the various books make for entertaining characters. While I would have liked a more overarching narrative in this volume, I think the general theme of why people love books and love to read is good. However, I also found it a little on the bland side, given the premise. It's more of a slice of life story instead of fantasy one. I was hoping for a little more out of it, but I think it would make a fun beach read or something to help pass the time on a rainy day.

Thank you NetGalley and Yen Press for allowing me to review this book.

This light novel takes place in our world, which is a lot different than many of them out there.

The main character can hear the voice of books and even has a book girlfriend. She's a bit crazy in her jealousy and curses him constantly. It was a little weird and slightly disturbing.

The book is episodic in its chapters. Each tells a different story that introduces new characters in each. He listens to the books and helps them find her human or tries to save humans from being possessed by book stories.

It was an enjoyable book.

Thank you again NetGalley and Yen Press.

I DNFed this Light Novel at 32%

I was really excited to read something about a character who can hear books but, I was disappointed with how the stories (the first story and beginning of the second) played out. It seemed to jump around a bit and the writing style itself was not something I enjoy. It felt very bare bones while also adding scenes that I didn’t feel lent to the story itself.

Not something I’d pick up.

This title was a bit quirky for me. Our MC Musubu, can hear books talking, and he spends time helping the books any way that he can.
Where this book gets weird, is the fact that one of the books is his girlfriend... It was a little too far fetched, and she was an awful character. She constantly said manipulative and abusive things to him, and it just didnt work well for me.
Love this in theory, but I think something got lost in the translation with this one.

For this bookreview I will try to talk about the 5 different books in there first and then about my overall impression of 'Bond and Book'. *THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS.*

A happy, happy day for Pippi Longstocking: This story was the first of the 5 stories this book contains and I must say at first confused me. As Pipi Longstocking is a really famous childrens book (at least in europe there's no get around of knowing this book) I thought the story may turn out to be a middle grade book oriented to children around 10-12 year olds but then the main character Musubu appeared and turned out to be in first year of highschool (so probably he's 16). Although after some time I got the hang of the story and thought it kinda cute, it was easy to guess the plottwist and all in all the story was the perfect example of average to me. The idea of losing a beloved childrens book and having a childhood trauma connected to this book was a good trope though, That's why I would give this story a 3/5.

An Urgent Request from Steam from Another World - The Great Giggling Battle: The light novel in another light novel. For this story I feel like we had the polar opposite of the first story as it was describing the cover and story of this book as an ecchi harem light novel and with that for me the group this book speaks to changed as obviously hinting on halfnaked women and steamy scenes is not usually a book for a 12 year old. Again I liked the outcome of the story but considering the start of the story and the developement to the ending it was just really average, The idea of using his extremely popular senpai was also just too convenient for me and this is something that will continue through nearly all of these stories.
3/5

A Book No One Knows, Viewed Upside Down: This story finally picked me up. At first I was not sure abput this book disease and how it would work and turn out, but this was the first book that actually got me interested and kept me reading to get to know which book it was. While I think if the overall idea of the book might have been executed differently it would have had an even stronger effect, this was for me by far the best story in this book. Also the book in this story was a completely different genre as the books in the other two stories. 4/5

A Summer Running Wild with Fifteen Boys: Here we get to see a typical survival camp situation kind of, were they go on a deserted island and try to have some fun with it. We get a a few hints on the backstory of Haruto and Musubu, but again nobody speaks about what actually happened, The story was I feel like more of a filler. It was short, the storx itself not anywhere near as deep as the other ones and was basically just used to give the readers some hints but not enough to actually understand anything. Because of it lacking depths it's only a 2,5/5.

The Devotion of 'The Surgery Room': The last story of this book was different. While I feel it was the story whcih read the longest and was jumping a lot between times, it also had the most interesting ending. But just because It was interesting I can't say for sure thaat I thought it was good. But that s probably what the author intended as the story was about views of the society on couples where the partners have different backgrounds (i.e. age or status). Also pretty good was that we got to know the reactions of different characters which kinda had the effect of having a discussion with all the different view points laid out to you, I think for the construction this might have been the best story but for my personal taste it just did not pick me up as much as the third story did and the pacing just wasn't for me. 3.5/5

Okay, so now to my overall impression. I was really excited as I started this story, because the idea of hearing the voices of books and talking to books seemed extremly interesting. But for me the execution of that idea just wasn't used to its full potential in this book and kind of just turned into the most average book I've ever read. The thing is that even though I say it was average and easy to guess, it was written in such an easy way that I still sped through this book. The last story as I mentioned was a bit slower for me but it was still fine. So if you want an easy read I recommend it, it's just not so overwhelming plotwise.
Another thing that just was not for me was Pincess Yonaga and her whole character (she just annoyed me and made Musubu look like the most naive guy when he was all over her). And with that I want to mention another big problem for me with this book: Too many hints on background stories that never appeared! I don't know if this book will be turned into a series. After reading the afterword and looking up the authors books on goodreads I am pretty sure there is no book telling us the story of Princess Yonaga or the story of how Musubu saved Haruto's life. I would have appreciated if the story would have started with these because that might have given us some deeper understanding for the reaccuring characters.
Also I think this book is a collection of stories that were meant to be published one by one, or otherwise I don't understand why there is the need to explain the characters again in every single story.
I liked that the Afterword was translated as well because it explained at least a bit, but I still think that a big story part is missing.
Funny side note: The stories I liked better were also the books I would be interested to read. I actually have the book of the third story waiting on my tbr and I wished I had already read it so I could have guessed what book it was.

To end on a good note: I am interested in picking up other books by this author and see how everything is connected and maybe get a better understanding for the structure of his books.

3/5

Mizuki Nomura's latest translated light novel presents us with five episodes containing the same character - a school boy who has the ability to speak with books. I used the word "episodes" on purpose, because each of this short stories plays out exactly like an anime episode. The character stumbles upon a mystery or something he thinks is not right, speaks with books and different human characters and in the end fixes it. Also just like anime each episode seems to be self-contained and does not bear any consequences on any of the other ones. Strange things happen and he meets strange students, even rapey teachers and all of that is forgotten come the next story. That's not particularly bad, per se, because the premise is interesting and the first two stories are somewhat engaging, but the whole thing gets somewhat boring and repetitive quite fast. I skimmed through the last two stories because I was pretty bored.

This was a fun read, but I'm not sure if I would have bought it in a store (though I probably would have picked it up in a library). The writing was not as a solid as I would have liked, but the concept kept me reading.

My thanks to NetGalley and Yen Press/Yen On for an eARC copy of this book to read and review.

This was most definitely weird. Not in a bad way, it had an interesting concept with the MC being able to hear books being able to speak.

There isn't much lead-up into the stories and I felt like I was jumping into book two without having read book one. Slightly unsettling.

I also didn't think the relationship between the MC and his "book girlfriend" was very healthy. He seemed fine with her threatening to curse him because he read other books and calling him a cheater when he did so, but I was not. Not to mention, he was human and she was a book.

This was interesting, it was different, but it was also very weird. I'm at a solid 2.5 stars and wish we had half-star options, as I don't think this is bad enough to warrant 2, but not quite good enough for 3. I'll tip up to 3, for the secondary characters and the love story at the end of the book. I would say it's worth a read and recommend to light novel and manga readers.

3, not sure if I'm going to continue reading this series or not but it's cute, stars.

thanks to netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a digital arc in exchange for an honest review.

this was a fun read, i skimmed a lot of it though because of how repetitive and awkward the text was, but the premise was fun enough.