I got this book for Christmas, a gift from my brother. It's a big book, but not a hard read. The short chapters make it easier to go through, with natural pause points. I found a bit difficult to track all the characters, especially given their unfamiliar Japanese names. The first chapter introduced all the students, but there are 40 of them. There was list of student names and numbers at the start of the book, but it would have been helpful to include the small amount of information about them that was embedded in the first chapter. The translation of this book was quite good.

I remember seeing the movie version of this as a teenager, and it being pretty wild. The book also had some of those scenes, but because it was a book it was able to draw out the characters thoughts and motivations more. Some were quite well done, although the amount of "crushes" and how these crushes affected things seemed over done. Overall, a very enjoyable book.