Title: The Eyes Are The Best Part

Author: Monika Kim

Link:  https://www.amazon.com/Eyes-Are-Best-Part-ebook/dp/B0CK5BQ7G7/

Launches June 25^th, 2024

Summary

Crying in H-Mart meets My Sister, the Serial Killer in this feminist psychological horror about  the making of a female serial killer from a Korean-American perspective.

Ji-won’s life tumbles into disarray in the wake of her Appa’s extramarital affair and subsequent departure. Her mother, distraught. Her younger sister, hurt and confused. Her college freshman grades, failing. Her dreams, horrifying… yet enticing. 

In them, Ji-won walks through bloody rooms full of eyes. Succulent blue eyes. Salivatingly blue eyes. Eyes the same shape and shade as George’s, who is Umma’s obnoxious new boyfriend. George has already overstayed his welcome in her family’s claustrophobic apartment. He brags about his puffed-up consulting job, ogles Asian waitresses while dining out, and acts condescending toward Ji-won and her sister as if he deserves all of Umma’s fawning adoration. No, George doesn’t deserve anything from her family. Ji-won will make sure of that. 

For no matter how many victims accumulate around her campus or how many people she must deceive and manipulate, Ji-won’s hunger and her rage deserve to be sated. 

A brilliantly inventive, subversive novel about a young woman unraveling, Monika Kim’s The Eyes Are the Best Part is a story of a family falling apart and trying to find their way back to each other, marking a bold new voice in horror that will leave readers mesmerized and craving more.

My Review

5/5 Stars

Nothing like a good story of female rage.

I read this book without reading the summary so I didn’t know what to expect. At first, I thought it would be a family drama about learning to live with a broken home. In a way, it was like that, but a much more psychologically complex version.

The story starts with a mother and her two daughters coping the best they can after the head of the household decides to leave. Ji-Won, the older of two sisters, is left to pick up the pieces and coddle her inconsolable mother. The downward spiral of her mental health starts slow and rapidly picks up. What begins as a series of dreams takes a turn for the worst when her mother meets a new man. A man who has anything but good intentions for the family.

When her dreams turn bloody, there’s no going back. Especially when she can no longer distinguish her dreams from her reality.

This was a fantastic body horror, especially with the <spoiler alert> eye eating. My only problem with this book was how suddenly the story came to an end. I’m hoping this means there’s a part two in the works because I’d love to see where Ji-Won takes the story next.