While I don't usually write reviews, when I do, It's either because I feel like the novel deserves more attention, or because it was a complete disappointment. "Dokuzetsu Shoujo no Tame ni Kitakubu Yamemashita," or "I Quit the Going-Home Club for a Girl with a Venomous Tongue," falls into the first category. It's a story that I went into with low expectations, thinking that it would just be some cheap fast food, but I ended up getting a whole A-5 wagyu steak. For the sake of this spoiler-free review, I'll refer to it as "Venom Tongue" for the sake of convenience. Venom Tongue is a veryshort novel that was originally a web novel published in Shousetsuka ni Narou, a self publishing web novel site that also gave birth to famous titles like Mushoku Tensei and Re:Zero. Kadokawa eventually picked it up and released a single volume, revised light novel version of it in 2018.
The story revolves around our two main characters: Sakaki Sui, our protagonist, and Hiwa Arina, the girl with the venomous tongue. Sui is an extremely entertaining joker who on the surface, is always joking. His jokes and monologues are filled with random references to things such as anime like Haruhi Suzumiya and Evangelion, western movies like Platoon and The Butterfly Effect (this movie plays a big role in this novel), and bunch of other miscellaneous things. He also often talks to the reader, breaking the fourth wall as one would say. Sui is an extremely colorful protagonist who never gets boring. Arina is the girl with the venomous tongue, and probably the best written character in the novel. She's often referred to as a rose in the novel, beautiful, but thorny. Like the title suggests, she verbally abuses almost everyone who approaches her and has an endless bag on insults ready for anyone she meets. She's what you would call a tsundere, but she doesn't get restricted by that character trait. Arina had issues in the past (won't mention because spoilers) that led to her current personality. As the story goes on, we learn more about Arina and the events in the story allow her to grow as a character and better herself as a person.

While I think the story is very good, it still has it's flaws. The two biggest flaws in my opinion are the pacing and the sudden plot twists. At times, the story feels like it takes too long on things and it has a lot of things that could be a lot shorter or cut out altogether. On the bright side of this, at least Sui is always there to make the reader laugh. The second issue, the plot twists, come extremely suddenly whenever we have one. They come from out of nowhere with almost no foreshadowing so they always catch the reader off guard and leaves them a bit confused. None of the plot twists were "bad" per say, but they were just extremely sudden.

Sadly, I can't go much into the story without spoiling, so I'll talk about the tone instead. For the most part, the series is a well done romantic comedy drama that has melancholic undertones, giving the reader the constant feeling of uncertainty as to whether we'll have a happy ending or not. At times, it'll have you crying tears of laughter, and at other times, you'll be crying tears of sadness. The author does an incredible job of balancing the comedy and the drama without making it feel unnatural.

Overall, I think it's a great, extremely touching read. It's short enough that you can read it in 2 days and it'll stick with you for a lot longer than that. If you like romantic comedies, quirky and unique characters with a side dish of depression, then I would recommend this to you. If you made it this far, thank you for reading my shitty review.