Confessions by Kanae Minato: The Price of Love, Revenge, and the Innocence Lost

Confessions by Kanae Minato. If you haven't read it yet, let me just say—you’re in for a ride. But not the kind you’re used to. This one’s more like a slow burn, creeping under your skin until it gets you in a way you didn’t expect. It’s dark. It’s chilling. But it’s also incredibly human. And it’s not just about the story—it’s about the raw, painful emotion that digs deep into the heart of every parent, every teacher, and every person who has ever loved a child.

The book is told through the eyes of a teacher, Yuko Moriguchi, whose life is shattered when her young daughter is murdered. Now, here's where it gets interesting: instead of just becoming the victim, Yuko flips the script. She doesn't just sit back and let the world chew her up. No. She takes control, revealing her true power in the most shocking way possible. The whole story is a slow, deliberate unraveling of a plan for revenge.

But what’s so powerful about Confessions isn’t the revenge itself. It’s the deep pain of a parent who has lost a child. Every move Yuko makes is motivated by a love so strong, it borders on obsession. And if you’re a parent, you can’t help but understand that feeling. You love your child so deeply, so fiercely, that even the thought of something happening to them feels like a betrayal of everything you are. That’s Yuko in this book. Her pain, her grief, it consumes her, but it also drives her to something even darker—something that, in the end, makes her as much a part of the tragedy as the children who caused it.

Now, let’s talk about the kids. The ones who did it. The murderers. As cold as it sounds, the book doesn’t just ask us to feel sorry for them. It asks us to understand them. These aren’t your typical “bad kids.” They’re products of their environment, products of a broken system. And that’s the terrifying part. You see, in their actions, they are just kids—yes—but they are also already learning the world’s harshest lessons. They are slowly realizing that actions have consequences, and in the end, they have to face their own.

I’m not going to give away how it all plays out, but I will say this: by the time you reach the end, you get a taste of their own game. The murderers get a taste of the pain they caused, and suddenly, they’re not so innocent anymore. They’re not the perpetrators anymore. They’re the ones left to deal with the aftermath of their actions. And while Yuko’s love for her daughter led her to some extreme decisions, the children’s own choices lead them to a reckoning they didn’t see coming.

That’s what hits the hardest in this book. It’s not just the revenge. It’s not just the mystery. It’s the reminder that our actions, no matter how small, have a ripple effect. We like to think we can get away with things, that we can play games with no consequences. But the truth is, those consequences have a way of catching up with us. And when they do, they don’t just hit us—they hit the people we love. That’s what makes this book so heartbreaking. It’s a story of love and loss, but also of how easy it is to get caught up in the cycle of violence and pain. And how sometimes, no matter how much you try to protect your child, the world’s darkness can find a way in.

In the end, Confessions isn’t just a story about murder. It’s a story about parenting, about love, and about how the things we do, even the things we don’t think twice about, can lead to the most tragic outcomes. And you don’t have to be a parent to get that. You just have to care. You just have to understand what it means to love someone so much that you’d do anything for them. That’s the real heart of this book.

It’s a painful, hard look at the consequences of our actions. But it’s also a reminder of how deep the love of a parent runs. How much it can hurt. How far it can go. And how, in the end, that love may be the one thing that saves us from becoming what we fear the most.