The Eyes are the Best Part

Feminist psychological horror about the making of a female serial killer from a Korean-American perspective.

–GoodReads

My Review

Monika Kim did her job too well. This book freaked me out and yet it was like a scary movie so good that you couldn’t look away. Or well, I couldn’t, and I suppose that was a pretty good pun from me considering the subject material of the book.

This book is about one young Korean-American woman’s descent into madness, becoming a vision that nightmares are made from.

I loved how eerie and thrilling it was, it was short and probably best it stayed that way, I think if it’d been longer it wouldn’t have been as impactful and really there’s only so much I can read about eyes in that sort of context and I’m pretty sure that goes for most people.

Ji-won’s life is pretty much in shambles, her Appa has left them, her Umma isn’t handling it well, and Ji-won’s struggling as a college freshman. Not to mention with her Appa gone and her Umma emotionally breaking down, that leaves her to take care of her younger sister.

Enter in George. Umma’s new boyfriend.

George is horrible, he’s a middle aged white man who clearly has a gross fetishization of Asian women and seems unable to keep his eyes averted from Ji-won or her sister, who is only 15. He also can’t even be bothered to learn their names right, calling them JW and JH and note even able to tell them apart really.

He’s just the straw that broke the camel’s back for Ji-won though. She’s spiraling, she’s having dreams about eyes, and cravings, and she is falling apart at the seams.

This as soon else has stated in their review on GR is not a jump scare, but let me tell you this is a slow creeping book, and the body gore is INTENSE. The descriptions of eyes will leave you permanently scarred lol. Ji-won has her reasonings for her actions and well to be frank I don’t find her to be a good person, that doesn’t mean the others in the book are good people, just that it was interesting to see that even before this descent to ‘evil’ that she did things that were clearly not okay to her friends and perhaps others, no spoilers.

The book is super atmospheric, super creepy, super EW. I loved it but I did feel like I wanted to see more consequences or at least the fear of consequences from Ji-won. I wanted to feel like she was afraid of being caught, and if she wasn’t afraid of being caught I wanted to see maybe even more slip-ups? Not sure how best to put it.

While this book is truly chilling and mind boggling…I could never reread it and in fact I’ve gone ahead and posted it for sale because I can’t look at the cover without shuddering. So I think that gives a good indication on creepy levels here.

So it was 3.5 cups from me, because I wanted more high stakes for Ji-won at times, and I think I wanted more of that descent, it felt like the only time the book seemed too short was when we got to the buildup and then we got left with that cliffhanger. Which is a norm in this genre but it was as if *too* much was left unsaid. Also, the eyes, she wrote it too well, I’m shuddering and scarred as I said lol. THIS IS A GRAPHIC GRUESOME NOVEL please be aware of that, and its overall darker themes like tackling racism and misogyny, stalking, and more!)