The Spring 2024 Light Novel Guide

You Can't See the Snow

What's It About? 

One summer night, Natsuki Uzume meets Yuki Iwato, an art student from the same university, and falls in love. After that, they spend night after night together. But as autumn approaches, Yuki suddenly tells him to find a cute girlfriend, wishes him well, and disappears from his life. Desperate to see her again, Natsuki visits her family home, but an unimaginable secret awaits him there: Yuki suffers from a mysterious illness that forces her to sleep through the winter each year. Is Natsuki willing to stay with her, even if it means spending every winter alone? And can Yuki, whose strange way of life has only brought her heartbreak, trust him enough to give him a chance?

You Can't See the Snow has a story by Rokudo Ningen. English translation by Taylor Engel. Published by Yen On. (April 16, 2024)

---

Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

You Can't See the Snow is a deceptively tricky book. That's not because it's particularly deep, although I daresay it wants you to think so. The story is instead difficult because it trades in elements that, separately, aren't all that good or interesting, but when put together, and combined with the author's note about writing the novel in the hospital, it becomes something more. It may not be greater than the sum of its parts, necessarily, but it certainly works better than it at first seems to have any right to.

The plot follows college students Natsuki and Yuki. She's a year ahead of him, and after their meet-cute at a club function (for one of those clubs that's a thinly disguise excuse to go drinking a lot that pops up a lot in fiction), he falls hard for her. But just before winter, she tells him to find a girlfriend and be happy, then disappears. After much soul-searching and a little bit of snooping, Natsuki tracks Yuki down and discovers her secret: she has a disease that causes her to sleep through the winter. That's clearly meant to sound much more romantic and lovely than the truth, which is that she hibernates like a bear. The book attempts to mask that while simultaneously acknowledging it, which is uneasy, although the writing overall is good enough to make up for that.

By treating Yuki's hibernation as both a legitimate disease that requires specialized treatment and a tragedy for her family, the novel is able to ground itself nicely. Additionally, the story can look at how Yuki's “romantic” condition becomes a draw for young men looking to “save” her – Natsuki and a college student before him both see themselves as willing to accept everything about Yuki and to devote themselves to her as martyrs to the cause. There's an acknowledgment of how foolish this is, but it's also used to draw a line between Yuki's would-be suitors. Is one of them more able to cope? Does their devotion say more about them than Yuki herself? I think the novel genuinely wants to answer these questions, although I don't know that it ever does.

On the whole, I think this is one of those books that people will either love or hate. It trades in some very old tropes about impossible loves and the tragedy of illness being perceived as romantic, and Yuki's younger sister is profoundly irritating, although we can see where she's coming from. I'd suggest using a library for this title, which is mainstream enough that it should be possible. It very earnestly tries, but I'm not sure that it ever truly succeeds.

---

Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. Yen Press, BookWalker Global, and J-Novel Club are subsidiaries of KWE.