Different Kinds of Women

I guess women stalkers are a thing to read about. Something mundane that turns into creepy urban horror. This is 'Hooked' by Asako Yuzuki (originally published in 2015). The translation is done by Polly Barton and published in February 2026.  

In this book, the author keeps her themes of cooking, familiar foods and thirty-year-old women as stalkers and potential murderers. Eriko Shimura, a high-flying executive at a big seafood company became addicted to reading a married housewife's blog. Shōko Maruo writes under the pseudonym 'Hallie B' in 'The Diary of Hallie B, the World’s Worst Wife'.

Eriko engineered what appeared to be a chance meeting between herself and Shōko at Gisele cafe. The friendship began easily, but it became too much for Shōko and she backed away. Eriko, very much obsessed with Shōko or the idea of her life, then began a campaign of stalking and blackmailing the housewife, and telling her what to do with her blog. (Reviews here, here, here and here.)

Oddly, both women seemed to not have many friends, if at all. Although Shōko has her husband Kensuke whom she appeared to share a companionable relationship with. They're both emotionally lacking in many ways, as are all women. Shōko herself, isn’t perfect, and had been caught on a date at an aquarium, kissing a younger man. Her marriage with Kensuke broke down.

Shoko also had to deal with lousy male figures in her life. She had her ailing and impoverished father who had been a wastrel since his youth, never been dependable in his marriage, and in his old age, was debilitated after a stroke. Then there was a younger brother who no longer wanted anything to do with the care of their father and the crumbling old house. It seemed that at the end, she made peace with how her life turned out, and resolved to turn it around.

It was then Shōko understood: deep down, her father was broken beyond repair. Whatever Shōko said, it wouldn't reach him. She understood for the first time, and with her whole self, that there were people in this world that you simply couldn't get through to.

She'd been so resistant to confronting him all these years. Just as she had been incapable of accepting Eriko for who she actually was. She couldn't stop believing somewhere that a miracle would occur, they would be bonded together, and the affection she'd felt for her on the first day would return. Now she felt the hope definitively vanish. What of it, though? It was in losing this hazy image of a future convenient to her that Shōko had finally seen what it was that that she had to do.

Nobody needs toxic women friendships in our lives. There are so many metaphors and allegories in the story. I burst out laughing at the idea of the Nile perch being predatory because it has been forced into it, like women who have been forced into roles they don't welcome. 

Eriko, our flawed stalker, also spiraled into an abyss of self-loathing and broke down in mental distress. She tried to sleep with her boss, and slept with a colleague Sugishita who has always made advances towards her. And made an enemy out of Sugishita's fiancee Maori. Eriko eventually had to take break from work, and also hash it out with her parents and their expectations of her versus what she wants to do.

She seemed to have one friend left at the end though — Keiko — a high school frenemy of sorts. There’s a lot of psychological trauma going on with Eriko. Self-inflicted, external environment caused or family pressure? Readers can reach their own conclusions.

She had come to understand that something in her meant that she ended up hurting the people she cared about when she was with them. She wasn't sure what she would do, but she knew that her time had come to fly the nest. She should doubtless have done it already. Still, she couldn't change the past. The only things Eriko could exercise freedom over were those beginning tomorrow.