It's a visual novel, so yeah, it kinda is a book. Some have zero choices. Some have choices that impact nothing. This isn't nearly as bad. And I don't think you even get to the character choice in 40 minutes, so you haven't actually played the game yet.
It does have a lot more story than I'm used to in VNs, but I mean... it doesn't have any less gameplay. It's just really quite long.