The Eyes Are the Best Part - Monika Kim

[thin trench]

From <t:1721001600:D> to <t:1725148800:D> | Leader(s): @shy grail

Book Link
Cover: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1696808869i/195703882.jpg

ID: 66842f46bf9a7dec629e3293
Announcement: #buddy-reads message

[shy grail]

[velvet tree]

[thin trench]

@shy grail,@white spear,@velvet tree,@honest canyon,@subtle owl,@round sierra,@brazen yarrow,@rich sky,@lime tangle,@sage lava,@high wyvern,@maiden tundra,@rough zodiac,@warm spade,@jade tendon

Hello everyone and welcome to the buddy read for The Eyes Are the Best Part by Monika Kim which officially starts today.

This is a debut so I'm pretty excited to get into it and explore Monika Kim's writing style. Some starter questions for everyone below:

1. Do you think horror would be a good genre to use to provide social commentary?
2. Have you ever had a really strange/creepy/scary dream that would be at home in a horror story?
3. This has been described as a 'good for her' novel. Do you enjoy stories that highlight people getting revenge or morally grey characters?

This BR currently runs until September 1st but if you need an extension at any point then just let me know. Happy reading!

[shy grail]

1. I think the great thing about writing is that you could probably use any genre to get your point across. I don't think I've read a horror like this before so I'm excited to see what this one is like.
2. I'm going to spoiler tag this in case people have an issue with ants but ||when I was a child I used to have this dream that my dad was turned into a giant ant (think godzilla sized) and he was trying to k*ll me, so that was fun.||
3. yes yes yes yes yes. I support women's rights and women's wrongs

[rich sky]

1. yes very much so
2. not joking but my life itself is fitting enough for a ghost-horror story. i'm skeptical of these things but when i was like, maybe 5 or 6, i saw my dead grandfather in the living room of my old house. my dad who is even more skeptical of these things at first was like no you did not but i described him in a way that my dad had never described my grandpa to me, and so it was very freaky yeah
3. yeah i honestly think if someone deserves it then they deserve it oops

[shy grail]

omg I can definitely see that working as a short story! that must have been terrifying

let's get smeagy on the case

[rich sky]

i was 5 and very like stupid so i just waddled over to my dad yapping without knowing how terrifying that must have been

[maiden tundra]

[velvet tree]

1. i agree with abi that any genre could be used to convey your point, but writing horror has me intrigued

2. i had a very gory dream once and was jumpy for the whole day

3. i love morally gray characters cause they’re so interesting to read about

[subtle owl]

I jumped in on this BR because anything psychological plus abi’s description of the book seemed just like my thing but looking at the cover now I’m having second thoughts

I can’t do any gore or violence but I’m hoping the book will lean heavily towards it being psychological horror rather than body horror

[velvet tree]

the content warnings on storygraph aren’t looking so well ngl 😭

[dapper elbow]

the content warnings
on storygraph aren’t looking
so well ngl 😭

- chocorb

[subtle owl]

1. I think yes! I felt that’s what Butter tried to do but like it forgot how it was supposed to be horror too. The genre definitely has a lot of scope on providing social commentary though, like I can think of so many themes already

2. Omg yesss many! I’ve had some extremely strange creepy and weird dreams all my life . I recently had a bad BAD dream that was also quite gory and I woke up crying and it took me WEEKS to get out of that headspace and convince myself it was just a nightmare, not reality

3. I doooo! I love novels that show more of the ‘human’ aspect and have always enjoyed takes where the MCs are morally grey

[subtle owl]

Looks like I’m going to have sit this one out until some brave and wonderful folks on the BR can confirm on how graphic everything is

[maiden tundra]

1. what is social commentary
2. yes ohmygod
3. yessssssss

graphic content warnings guys

[shy grail]

this site has a definition of social commentary and some examples in media https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-social-commentary/ but essentially it’s using media to help make a comment about an issue that exists in society

also omg the content warnings if they bother some people I would totally understand

but I’m sure someone reading can provide updates on just how graphic they are and if it’ll be palatable for people or not

(that was not a ||cannibalism|| joke)

[white spear]

lol in this case i thought the content warnings were a part of the appeal? it's a horror no?

[shy grail]

I mean they are to me and I thought the name and cover of the book gave an idea to what was going down but some people who’ve signed up might not be into that or can’t stomach it right now

[subtle owl]

I personally misunderstood ig and didn’t really look into the genre categorisations

The blurb’s like ‘feminist psychological horror’ and that’s something I’d absolutely love reading but body horror and explicitly gore stuff - I find that potentially triggering and intolerable . I’ve read and enjoy psychological horror that plays with your psyche but doesn’t go all out being graphic so ig it’s more of a me thingy where I have a tiny window of what hits and what doesn’t?

I still really want to read the book though and I will if the TWs are like skippable or like I know where they are so I can be like mentally prepared. Of recent, I’ve been at a better mental space and have been more tolerant but like want to take the necessary precautions just in case

Also, I hadn’t seen the cover until the BR post went up which is kinda my bad, like idk how a cover like that slipped my notice

[shy grail]

It's okay Hanzy, if no one else has let you know before then I'll let you know which are the bad chapters that you need to skip if you do decide to read

[subtle owl]

Thanks abi! That’s really super kind of you

[maiden tundra]

ohh

[rich sky]

-ch.1
||my dad also says the eyes are the best part, lol, i love eating fish eyes||

[rich sky]

-ch.5
||all this talk of white men being the superior romantic partner is traumatising because my mother also used to push that sentiment on me & also it’s not true.. i’ve been with south east asians, arabs, jews, and european men, they’re all the same, men||

but i’m really liking this book so far

also it completely slipped me that this is set in the us of a, i thought we were still in seoul, oops

-ch.8
||WHAT LMFAOOOO||

https://tenor.com/view/pedro-monkey-puppet-meme-awkward-gif-15268759

||i already don’t trust geoffrey with a G not a J||

-ch.10
||and i do not trust george either jfc i don’t trust any of the men in this book||

-ch.12
||FOUL + i was so right to not trust george + that bumper sticker makes me want to KMS||

-ch.13
||lol i’m so scared of eyes actually so this is a nightmare||

also so far i’m ch.13 (23% in according to my kindle) and nothing graphic has happened except in ch.13 there’s a (tw) ||cannibalistic body gore dream|| and also a lot of chatter about white men and asian girls

will update on the rest of the book

-ch.14
||I am genuinely terrified of geoffrey||

||i’m kind of confused by this ‘jealousy’ thing like.. ok….||

-ch.15
||i’m going to somehow kill george with a pillow holy shit that’s disgusting he’s such a pervert||

really weird eyeball dream in ch.16

-ch.17
||you don’t want to come here again because the waitress is white???? WHAT||

-ch.18
||lol how toxic is that||

-ch.22
||that is so disgusting what the fuck man||

||So many weird dreams damn||

-ch.24
||i totally get that the umma is not in a proper state of mind but jesus she is so blind if she thinks everything is okay||

-ch.28
||WTF LOOOOL K||

[rich sky]

-ch.31
||girl no she did not tell you where her mum worked! you little stalker FREAK||

[rich sky]

||wow i would probably behead a man if he called me a little oriental girl||

-ch.32
||slanted pussies?!?! what is that?!||

[rich sky]

-ch.33
||I understand why they’re there but I’m getting a bit tired of all the wonky dreams||

Whew

relatively graphic scene at the end of ch.37 involving a ||homeless man||

I say relatively graphic because i expect this book to become more graphic even though i personally gagged at this scene and think it is extremely graphic

[maiden tundra]

im so excited to read this lol

[rich sky]

it’s really good ayesha!!

[velvet tree]

are you liking this book so far?

[rich sky]

Yes because i personally really relate to everything being spoken here about race and love

[rich sky]

First instance of ||cannibalism|| in ch.38

I said ewwwww out loud

Completely ||turned me off of eating fish eyes||

-ch.39
||geoffrey’s with a G not a J inability to understand why Ji-won might be upset at him giving her a pair of chopsticks is so astonishing||

[rich sky]

-ch.40
||naurr not a holiday to Thailand jesus||

||george is really fitting in the stereotype||

||side piece?!?!?!?!?! omg he is worse than I thought||

||god he is so disgusting||

-ch.44
||I’m so scared. geoffrey with a G is definitely stalking ji-won. maybe he saw her eat that homeless man’s eye. i’m so scared.||

-ch.45
||STOP ITTTTT OH MY GOD||

graphic chapters (will edit as I go): 37, 45, 54, 65 (kind of), 70

general spoilers
also, i don’t really see this book as being ||as a good for her|| so far. ||maybe in the end something happens with george, but her victims so far have been innocent people.||

-ch.48
||i want to vomit!||

-ch.50
||loololololol i’m cackling||

[maiden tundra]

[rich sky]

[rich sky]

this has changed

Okay, i finished! i think i will give this .75
it was good but yeah

[shy grail]

👀

[rich sky]

interesting
only open when you’re done with the book

[white spear]

gonna start this tonight

[shy grail]

yay!

[white spear]

ch 4: || wow this has started way different from what i was expecting. quite a depressing opening story and so sad that it explains why umma's waiting for her jerk of a husband... ||

[white spear]

ch 10: || i have a suspicion somehow that this mom's new love interest is not going to go well... ||

[white spear]

ch 12: ||

IM REPUBLICAN BECAUSE WE CANT ALL BE ON WELFARE
wtf... in california of all places? ||

[white spear]

ch 12 || this is so awkward it is physically painful to read ||

[white spear]

ch 18: || oof she self-destructed hard i get where she's coming from but man that is messed up. ||

[shy grail]

I much prefer the US cover to the UK cover for this one but hey I'm starting now!

[shy grail]

Chapter 1: Book title name drop in the first sentence

||Fish are nasty though and I definitely wouldn’t want to be eating their eyes either||

Chapter 2: ||Okay so I'm assuming that the dad dying and the grief because of that is going to be one of the catalysts for the books events 👀 it's very sad that they lost him and I get that grief can make you do strange things.||

||Does eating fish eyes give you good luck? I haven't heard that before.||

[dapper elbow]

||Does eating fish eyes
give you good luck? I haven't
heard that before.||

- abi(g egg)

[shy grail]

Chapter 3: ||Wait, so he didn't die and just cheated and left? I'm confused||

Chapter 4: I like how short these chapters are

[white spear]

|| not dead just a deadbeat asshole ||

[shy grail]

||They left the kids alone because they had no money and made them fend for themselves? And the eldest was 14? Come on now, that's not right at all.||

[shy grail]

||Yay, the best kind of man /s ||

||I genuinely can't believe that her mum survived through those conditions.||

Chapter 5: ||"Have you ever heard of a white man treating his girlfriend or wife badly?" Yes.....almost every white man I've ever known. Whatever umma needs to tell herself to feel better though||

||She's really throwing a pity party for herself ||

Chapter 6: ||Nah, that description of her eating the eye was pretty gross.||

Chapter 7: ||I've never heard of saju palja before but that sounds like an interesting concept. Like doing your birth chart to figure out if you're going to be a good person or not.||

[shy grail]

Chapter 8: ||These guys are gross dicks||

Chapter 9: ||Leaving and immediately serving her divorce papers completely blindsiding her is just cold.||

Chapter 12: ||George is a republican with dodgy views? Umma dump him now and get better taste in men pronto!||

||Her self esteem must be in the toilet to be putting up with a man who's overly familiar and forcing code switching/western nicknames on her daughters because he can't be bothered pronouncing their names properly.||

[rich sky]

||if by her you mean umma then she probably doesn't|| iirc

[shy grail]

I do yes

Chapter 12: ||No, it's so gross when patrons are inappropriate with their servers. Stop checking them out, leave them alone, and let them focus on their job.||

||How can you say that this random restaurant is better than actual restaurants in China? I'm sick of George already.||

||This man is in his 50s checking out an 18 year old. VILE.||

Chapter 14: ||Is this fruity? ||

Chapter 15: ||George makes me sick!! 🤢 please how long do I have to put up with him?||

Chapter 17: ||Please, I can't put up with his racist fetishising ass much longer||

[shy grail]

||I was not expecting her to be that mean to her friends at all. She really wanted to burn everything down.||

[shy grail]

||I'm so worried that he's trying too hard to appear to be a feminist and secretly he's a real bad dude.||

Chapter 21: ||Red flags from Geoffrey here he's clearly jealous of Alexis and being rude to her because of it.||

[white spear]

i will have to catch up to abi after dinner

[shy grail]

I'm glad you're not reading this whilst eating dinner

[white spear]

haha stuff like this doesnt bother me in that way

im one of those "could eat a sandwich during an autopsy" types

[shy grail]

see big stuff like that and I'm okay but little stuff like tiny bits of bleeding, veins and eyeballs I find gross

[white spear]

ahhh

i did work in a morgue once... could have something to do with it

[shy grail]

that sounds so interesting!

[white spear]

it was a job during school, i was IT support and got to run all over the crypts and exam rooms fixing printers

[shy grail]

that's still pretty cool though

Chapter 23: ||I'm scared for Ji-won with how these dreams are escalating.||

[white spear]

still saw plenty of... stuff

[shy grail]

Chapter 26: ||I like Alexis so far but considering that most people in this book suck I'm worried that she's going to turn out to be bad as well.||

||Geoffrey, stop being so pushy. She doesn't owe you anything and by badgering her to meet up you're just making things worse.||

Chapter 28: ||Getting engaged after a couple of months when he's the literal worst? Ji-won and Ji-hyun please do something and save your mum from George.||

[shy grail]

Chapter 31: ||Girl, just hurry up and kill this racist asshole already.||

Chapter 38: ||Not her eating eyes that she stole from a dead homeless man's body. wtf||

Chapter 40: ||Of course George is taking advantage of Umma. I doubt she'd listen if Ji-won told her the truth though.||

||He's disgusting calling Ji-hyun a slut. wtf is wrong with him. Please someone get him out of their lives.||

Chapter 45: ||Girl, please stop finding random dudes who are dead/almost dying and taking their eyes. It's completely unhinged behaviour||

[shy grail]

||Agreed. They've been victims of opportunity but they're clearly stand-ins for George (and maybe Geoffrey too if he carries on).||

Chapter 49: ||I'm just waiting for George to break Umma's heart now that he's gotten what he needs from her and is back with Jen. Surely he's not gonna go through with this wedding.||

Chapter 51: ||Not her catfishing him I guess she wants to show her mum proof that he's cheating but there must be other ways to do it. I don't get her motivations rn and she's going in a different direction than I expected.||

Chapter 57: ||Geoffrey is completely delulu||

Chapter 58: ||Oh Ji-won is well and truly losing it now||

Chapter 61: ||Geoffrey is a complete creep. Can she get rid of him too?||

Chapter 65: ||I still don't like Geoffrey the creepy stalker even if he did save Ji-won.||

||I can't believe I'm rooting for a murderous cannibal. What is wrong with me? ||

Chapter 66: ||I can't believe she had a brain tumour all this time||

Chapter 70: ||She's absolutely wild for killing him and taking his eyes in the hospital.||

Chapter 72: ||Framing Geoffrey for everything she did that's some good food.||

Oh wow. I genuinely loved that. ||Ji-won was so unhinged and obsessive and yet I still wanted her to put a stop to George and Geoffrey because they were both ridiculously gross. I like that she also did what she did to help protect her mum and sister and that by the end of the book they're safe (for now). The undertones with her and Alexis was clearly not straight but I'm not mad that they did officially go there because the book itself was so fast paced and focused on gross men that it might have felt a little out of place to have a romance subplot. So glad that George and Geoffrey got what was coming to them.|| 4.25 ⭐

[shy grail]

||Ji-won did not get that memo at all apart from the time when she was sick and it was all foamy and stuff but I think that was the overconsumption of water rather than the eyes .||

[thin trench]

@shy grail,@white spear,@velvet tree,@honest canyon,@subtle owl,@round sierra,@brazen yarrow,@rich sky,@lime tangle,@sage lava,@high wyvern,@maiden tundra,@rough zodiac,@jade tendon

Hey everyone. We're about halfway through this BR now so just a little check-in.

Finished: jana, abi
Reading: castral

If anyone else has started this then please let me know and post some of your thoughts to get some BR points.

1. If you knew Ji-won do you think you'd be able to empathise with her doing bad things for good reasons?
2. What actions would you recommend for someone to take if their dreams were blurring with reality? If you've started this book, do you think Ji-won made the right choices?

[round sierra]

I'm definitely going to read this; just waiting for my next paycheck

[shy grail]

Between jana and myself the average rating is 4 stars right now which I hope continues

[white spear]

ch 26: || oh, ambien, my beloved... nothing good can come of this.

new stalker? ||

[white spear]

ch 31: || bruh. i didnt know im supposed to be rooting for the murderer but here i am. ||

ch 31: || also is geoffrey just a virtue signaller? im getting weird covert racist/misogynist vibes. maybe he's just a try-hard, idk... ||

[white spear]

ch 38: || 🤢 ||

ch 40: || george is so gross. ||

[white spear]

|| yeah i've never heard this one before either. doesnt even make sense but i can believe that some idiot has said it 🙄||

[white spear]

ch 44: || what the hell is geoffrey stalking ji-won? that's way too much of a coincidence. ||

[white spear]

ch 50: || lmao this is impressive lying. there is no way i would be able to pull this off and keep a straight face ||

[white spear]

lmao || i dont think she's looking for proof, she could have done that a long time ago! she's setting him up to kill him for sure. ||

ch 53: || wow an AMF... bringing back memories from my youth. it means "adios mother fucker" for those who don't drink/aren't from the US ||

[shy grail]

||It would’ve been so much easier for herself and her family if she had done that but regardless it was some good food ||

[white spear]

ch 55: || would you still love me if i was a cannibal worm? ||

[white spear]

ch 61: || bleh... i have heard that people like geoffrey exist but i struggle to imagine this mentality: using the rhetoric of a feminist and intersectionality as a cover to hide behind and lure people in... how can anyone listen to the words and fail to comprehend their meaning so completely? ||

[white spear]

ch 66: || hmmmmm. ||

[white spear]

eh lol || citation needed just because an acid in isolation will induce vomiting and the eye contains said acid doesnt mean it is present in a sufficient quantity within the eye to cause vomiting. i doubt many documented examples of people consuming human eyes and vomiting exist.||

final thoughts: || ok so i liked this a lot but i had one major issue: the brain tumor. i know there was subtle foreshadowing of it with ji-won experiencing strange vision distortions, flashing, headaches, etc, but it almost felt a little like deus ex machina that i just didn't need. i didnt need an explanation for her cannibalism: it could have been psychosis just as easily as tumor and i would have been satisfied with the story. the tumor feels like an apology on behalf of the author to say "sorry guys she didnt actually mean it."

anyway, what i really liked about this story: such a great build up of this metaphor surrounding eyes. from a mother whose eyes were only good for weeping, men whose eyes were focused on all the wrong things, a symbolic representation of asian fetishization by the white male gaze, blue eyes being seen as beautiful and brown eyes being seen as ugly and dirty (shout out to The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison for this significant reference), it culminated in a wild ride of consuming eyes to change ones fate instead of being a servant to it. beautiful. || 4 stars

as a side note, this BR + The Bluest Eye BR is the metaphors blend perfectly, like a cheese and wine pairing.

[shy grail]

Yes, the symbolism was so so good in this! I'm so glad you enjoyed it and I'll be finishing The Bluest Eye next as well so it'll be interesting to read having read this one.

[rich sky]

1. ||as i have said before i don’t really see her as doing bad things for good reasons. the murder victims were mostly innocent people. not like raging racists or anything. except for maybe that one guy i think.||
2. ||i actually wouldn’t know what to do and might just stay away, not because i don’t care but because i don’t know what i can do to help and i don’t want my uneducated self to make everything worse.||

[shy grail]

||I think what happened to George and Geoffrey was for 'good' reasons i.e. protection for her and her family but 100% the other two were not for good reasons at all.||

[white spear]

1. || i definitely understand where a lot of the rage is coming from, i think it is well explained in the book. BUT ji-won is actually incapable of explaining her motivations clearly. she doesnt even question her reality or self-reflect, so it's unlikely that i'd be able to understand her in real life.||
2. || this has actually happened to me before. seek professional medical help if you are concerned about your grasp on reality. it's freaky and confusing when it happens. ji-won was letting herself operate on autopilot it felt like, so no i dont think she was making good/correct choices. ||

[rich sky]

||OHH YES YES for the double Gs yes. idc what happens to them they can both have their eyes eaten and replaced with rotten eggs ||

[shy grail]

||stinky eyes for stinky men ||

[lime tangle]

I'm starting this today! No clue what to expect but I'm ready! 👀

[shy grail]

So excited to see what you think

[lime tangle]

Honestly, I was sold when I looked at the blurb and the first few words were feminist psychological horror

[shy grail]

It totally deserves that description as well

[lime tangle]

The first chapter was a little gross though 😂 || I hate fish eyes, can't eat anything that stares at me lmao 😂||

[rich sky]

i really love fish eyes. fish heads in general. grilled with sweet teriyaki sauce

[shy grail]

yeah I never have and never will eat them

[rich sky]

i get that to be honest

[hoary light]

Joining this later in the month, just saving my space and setting the proverbial fold up chair in the spooky lawn

https://tenor.com/view/jason-momoa-chair-popcorn-time-ready-to-party-dis-gon-be-good-gif-24174564

[shy grail]

Yes! Come join us

[round sierra]

Getting this on Wednesday trying to hold off on buying books so need to go to the library in the next town

[shy grail]

can’t wait to see what you think

[lime tangle]

Up to ch64 || omg this has been so wild! I absolutely love it so far but I've been so freaked out, especially when she first started killing and eating eyes! Had to put the book down because I was worried I wouldn't be able to sleep 😂😂
I'm currently at the part where she said she's going to meet up with George finally and kill him 👀 Funnily enough I hate creepy rapey Geoffrey far more! Hope she kills him too even though his eyes are brown 😆

Also, am I the only one who felt romantic vibes coming from Alexis (and of course JW freaking out about any sort of similar feelings from her end) ||

[lime tangle]

Lol switching between the Olympics ceremony and || Ji-Won eating George's eyeballs || is such a fever dream 😂😂

[lime tangle]

Finished! || Geoffrey taking the fall was a nice ending. When they mentioned the tumor, I was initially very disappointed because that would feel like such a letdown after all the serial killer character building.. Super happy to see that Ji-Won was going strong as a psycho until the end (and beyond lol) ||

[rich sky]

omg Ahahahahaha i cackled

[hoary light]

Just started! Needed a pallete cleanser so I'm jumping into this early

Ch. 3: ||we hate Appa in this household ||

Also, unrelated to plot but minor spoiler for first chapters, ||fully craving crispy fish skin and head right now. Umma is right and the eyes are the best part ||

[rich sky]

YESSSS FINALLYYY

welcome to the ||fish head and eyes club. members: jana and alex||

[shy grail]

||NO, I commented as well on the vibes with Alexis because they were definitely there! Then felt bad because omg I'm rooting for the cannibal to get a girlfriend but maybe I can dream and it'll happen after the book ends||

[shy grail]

Yeah, you guys are on your own with that club

but I'm a veggie too which is one of the reasons why I'm not joining

[shy grail]

||I'm so glad you liked it. It definitely could have been a bit of a cop-out if they diagnosed her with a tumour and then she was 'back to normal' but they fully leaned into her being morally grey which I loved. Geoffrey 100% got what he deserved too.||

[hoary light]

Ch. 8: ||"It's important that women feel safe around me." - dude is waving all the red flags.||

[hoary light]

Ch. 13: ||||

Ch. 15: ||ugh role reversal is so hard. MC is struggling and I can tell this is a perfect setup for emotional disaster to ensue ||

Ch. 16: ||silent hill OST was the wrong choice for this fever dream creeped out.||

[shy grail]

That sounds so atmospheric

[hoary light]

Ch. 18: ||child ||

Ch. 20: ||UGH can we skip to the part where we murder George, what an asshole ||

[velvet tree]

im gonna leave this br because i can’t find the book anywhere

[dapper elbow]

im gonna leave this
br because i can’t find
the book anywhere

- chocorb

[hoary light]

I'm sorry choco!!

[shy grail]

noooo! I will fight your library and bookshops

[lime tangle]

Maybe because it's relatively new?

[hoary light]

Ch. 24: || I'm gonna scream. The fact Umma's broken English wouldn't allow her to understand his mocking her daughters, her being tender with Ji-Won in contrast with his disgusting ass, UGGGGGGHHH||

[shy grail]

Possibly but sometimes newer books are more available to me just because the demand for people wanting to read it is higher so libraries usually get more copies

[shy grail]

||I feel so bad for their family but how does Umma not see how horrible he is??||

[lime tangle]

|| I think she's not seeing him clearly but rather some fantasy man that will give her a do-over with a wealthy man that could treat them all right ||

[hoary light]

||I feel for Umma at this point.||

[shy grail]

||Very true but she's letting her wants cloud her judgement and it's just sad to see how much she's willing to let slide.||

[lime tangle]

|| oh yeah definitely, she's very flawed. But I like how imperfect she is, it brings a lot of depth to the story! ||

[hoary light]

Ch. 28:

[rich sky]

||my 2 cents on this is that it's also because he's white. when her husband left she told the fmc that white men are better etc. so my guess is that 1. she genuinely believed that and was just blind or 2. she's realising that it's not true but doesn't want to believe that she's wrong.

like, at no point in this book did umma pripritise her daughters, imo. i think she is just one of those women who always need a man. and i don't necessarily hate her for it as a reader but as a daughter... oh boy||

||my last paragraph made me sound pick me, my bad, but it's a common concept in my irl circle lol, and it's not like a bad thing if you know how to manage it well||

[vernal nexus]

Have my copy - excited to get started!

[shy grail]

excited to see what you think of it

[shy grail]

||Yes, she definitely seems pretty stubborn throughout but I do think that she wants George to be good because she wants to be happy and because she does think he can provide for her that she just focuses on the 'good' in him. Like 'oh, he can speak Korean' which yeah, technically he knows some words but butchers the pronunciation so much that people can't really tell what he's saying. ||

||I've lived through a parent prioritising romantic relationships over me and it sucks so I totally get it. I think because she wasn't really wanted by her husband and that she had to pursue him that because George is showing her attention she's just latching onto that because it might be one of the only times she's ever felt like that.||

I like how much this book packs in character wise in less than 300 pages

[rich sky]

||he doesn’t even apologise for butchering the words, and it’s very clear to me that he’s one of those white men, super annoying and irritating and i want to feel bad for umma because she isn’t as aware to these things as the fmc is but like and yeah i’m sorry you had to live through that ||

||and it’s funny because he technically didn’t want her as well. he just needed a place to stay.||

[rich sky]

and yes me too! i really wasn’t expecting any of that to come out! i thought it would be just a fun little thriller about ||a girl eating eyes|| but i’m very glad that it was something more

[hoary light]

Ch. 31: ||this author masterfully created a male character with the ability to piss off any person on Earth||

[rich sky]

IF A MAN SAID THIS TO ME.................

[shy grail]

||Down with Geoffrey ||

[shy grail]

and you just know that he thinks of himself as a nice guy

[rich sky]

throwing up in my mouth real quick

https://tenor.com/view/kid-barf-vomit-almost-throw-up-gif-11840978400802773861

[hoary light]

https://tenor.com/view/friends-phoebe-buffay-i-have-to-go-scream-into-a-pillow-scream-screaming-gif-22068114

[shy grail]

https://tenor.com/view/men-are-horrible-jake-perralta-gif-8745375

[hoary light]

Ch. 37: ||||

Ch. 38 had me ||gagging uncontrollably. May need to take a breather. It's been a rough day.||

[hoary light]

Ch. 41: ||The sleeping pills in the change ||

[hoary light]

Ch. 55: ||This MC is getting more and more unreliable and unredeemeable (sp?) ||

[shy grail]

oh boy I can't wait to see ||what you think of her by the end then ||

[hoary light]

Ch. 58 and this book is just flying by! The writing and pacing is insane.

[hoary light]

Ch. 66: we're 95% into the book and ||STUFF is STILL happening lmao this is wild||

[shy grail]

||a rollercoaster until the end||

[hoary light]

I finished

Will write some thoughts when I'm home. I'm unsure about this one

[hoary light]

Final Thoughts

I went pretty blind into this book and I'm glad!

||Full disclosure: I like fish eyes. I know their texture and taste and consistency and I could feel parts of this novel to uncomfy degrees.
I was expecting it to be really gruesome and hardcore, and I was pleasantly surprised at how it disgusting some chapters were, all without being exploitative. The characters were a little under-developed to my liking, but I'm a sucker for long, dragging, never-ending description tomes
Some of the descriptions were so intense they had me "rewinding" my Kindle in the middle of the beach, mouth slightly agape

I also like how our main character was unapologetically insane. Sure, in the end she considered whether her brain tumour could have been the cause for her condition, but that was quickly discarded in the last 10% of the novel. Her acts were not as erratic as she let us believe. The deliberation of her crimes being pinned on Geoffrey (and the implication she had her father in the back of her mind in the closing pages) was deliciously wicked.

I feel like we were made to root for the murderer during this whole read but I couldn't help feeling conflicted when it came to their parents and their traumatic upbringing - how their mother was belittled and used and cheated on right in front of her eyes or how their father gambled everything on a bad choice and threw away their future in a strange country. None of them had anyone rooting for them and I felt deeply saddened by the first few chapters.

I just wished the relationships had had a few more pages to develop before all went to hell, both within the family and with other characters.||

That was a solid 4 for me

[hoary light]

Felt! I wanted ||a little fruity chapter for my self-indulgent heart ||

[round sierra]

I START THIS TODAY AFTER I NAP

[shy grail]

nap then reading sounds like heaven

[round sierra]

I started and I'm already so into how this is written, well worth the wait.

[shy grail]

omg yay I love that for you

[hoary light]

I was looking back at my thoughts on this and I realised I felt genuinely upset at the male characters in the novel. They were honestly way too similar to people I know and have dealt with and I got aggravated thinking about ||George and Geoffrey and even Appa.|| This book was actually really good at making me feel things.

[round sierra]

8
|| @ Geoffrey. If he's an actual nice guy, great. But I get wary of guys who act like this too...||

[round sierra]

General ||The men in this book trigger my fight or flight reflex||

[round sierra]

36
||"You aren't like other girls". THIS FILLS ME WITH RAGE. I KNEW THIS GUY WAS STINKY.||

[white spear]

|| i was a lil sus of geoffrey at first but it took me an embarrassingly long time to spot all the red flags ||

[round sierra]

||I think it's because I knew a lot of Geoffrey's IRL ||

[shy grail]

||Geoffrey isn't like other guys either, he's worse ||

[round sierra]

~Chapter 47
||This book is awesome. This MC is top-tier. She's unhinged.||

[round sierra]

And I'm all done - I should have slept like two hours ago but

Definitely can't yap right now, I'll write more about it when I get home from work.

[shy grail]

staying up to read

[round sierra]

||A salty liquid trickles down my throat. The outside is crunchy cartilage. I jam it into my left cheek and bite down with my molars; jellylike matter explodes within my mouth.||

Guys, you know that I like gross things, did you really think I wouldn't like this? Hot off the presses, I was going to read this even if the BR wasn't going on, tbh abi you just bumped it way up on my list and I'm glad you did. When it gets a paperback release, I'll definitely be buying it to add to my ever bulging horror shelves.

||The pacing is very very fast. Even for a shorter book at under 300 pages, it feels like this book flies by. It's comprised of many short chapters but each rapid scene shift feels suitable to what's happening to Ji-won. It all begins with her father leaving the family after meeting another woman, then we have her starting college, then her mother meets a new man after mourning the loss of her father... It's very clicks fingers quick but every scene lasts as long as necessary - we get all the information we need. If anything the quick nature of these scenes does not amply prepare for when Ji-won finally does go off the deep end. In fact after her first murder I couldn't help but think "okay, so she wakes up now?" and she never did ||

||Ji-won is a sufficiently nasty, pitiable character. There's a surprising amount of layers to what's going on with her: between her father leaving her, she has pressure to succeed academically for the sake of her family, the need to encourage her mother in spite of her new relationship to a (awful) man, her sister is a neurotic mess that she needs to protect, she has cut contact with all of her friends following shame/spite over not getting into the same college as them - oh and she now also has the insatiable want to eat blue eyeballs. Of course it's heavyhanded in the subtext of addressing the micro and macro aggressions that Ji-won must deal with but you know, I'm here for it. We also address the racism, misogyny, fetishism and everyday bullshit that women like Ji-won must contend with. I call Ji-won nasty, not for her roaring rampage of revenge against all this - but rather because she's nuts. ||

||But I like the slow-reveal of Ji-won's past actions - at the very start we're faced with a slightly erratic but hard done by woman trying to contend with her difficult homelife - then we hear about how she made efforts to completely dismantle her friendship group, the fact that she tried to feed her sister oleander as a child... there's something very wrong with Ji-won. And it only gets worse. Now, apparently there was a tumour? Mentioned in the last few chapters but it becomes apparent that this has very little to do with her true nature but definitely why she was having the hallucinations perhaps? ||

||There's not much to add about the other characters - as I said, all the male characters trigger my fight or flight reflex but they're designed that way. I enjoyed that there was a little bit of time dedicated to the backgrounds of Ji-won's parents and her relationship with her female classmate that began to border on the obsessive. Geoffrey is very much a real guy that anyone could meet, the same for George unfortunately, even if they seem a little bit flanderized, they definitely serve their purpose and fit in with the book just fine.||

||I could see where the plot was heading after the backpack theft but I was A-OK with that. I had a blast, it's comparable to watching a 90s B-movie and I'm here for it. Loved the gross cannibalistic descriptions and how out of left-field the killings seemed to come. Really pleasant surprise for contemporary horror . ||

||I started to read The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and I'm wondering is the connection that's made to blue eyes in that novel is related at all in terms of subtext Very cool tbh. ||

[shy grail]

Long Vaude review

I'm glad you enjoyed it though

[honest canyon]

i have a paperback copy though

[round sierra]

I can only find the hardback copy here!

[honest canyon]

i have just had an eyeball staring into my soul the last month because i have me soon tbr beside my bed

[thin trench]

@shy grail,@white spear,@honest canyon,@subtle owl,@round sierra,@brazen yarrow,@rich sky,@lime tangle,@sage lava,@high wyvern,@maiden tundra,@jade tendon,@vernal nexus

Hey all! A friendly reminder that this BR ends in one week. If you haven't yet started then there's still time to read the book and leave your thoughts for BR points.

Read: jana, castral, abi, Celine, Alex, Vaude
Currently reading:

[maiden tundra]

i will start this week

[shy grail]

[brazen yarrow]

i needed this reminder

[shy grail]

just doing my duty

[brazen yarrow]

this book reads so easy lol

i got to chapter 3 in 2 seconds

i think i may be a ||picky eatter like the girls tho.. i already get uneasy by the smell of fish but eyes 🤢🤢 Hopefully the rest of the book isnt about different kinds of eyes||

Going into this blind, but it seems that the author is korean which iloveeee or its set for a korean family

[hoary light]

Oh we're definitely talking about ||different kinds of eyes ||

[hoary light]

and agreed! I had a lot of fun with this and it really flew by

[dapper elbow]

and agreed! I had
a lot of fun with this and
it really flew by

- Alex🌻

[brazen yarrow]

hmm different huh

maybe ill check the synopsis, just to give myself a heads up

[maiden tundra]

damn omg

ill actually start this today, my CR can wait its toooooooooo slow

[dapper elbow]

ill actually
start this today, my CR
can wait its toooooooooo slow

- aye shall study

[maiden tundra]

no

AHHH

[shy grail]

she's korean-american like the mc!

[shy grail]

it is really fast paced so I hope you enjoy it

[brazen yarrow]

lovelyy fits for my asian lit goal

[honest canyon]

I love the short chapters

[honest canyon]

Finished chapter 7 ||The descriptions of eating the fish eyes are making me shudder ||

[maiden tundra]

my mental health did not let me

[honest canyon]

Chapter 12|| I wouldn't even be able to recognize a rolex ||

[shy grail]

||all watches are watches to me ||

[honest canyon]

Chapter 12 ||ew George is gross ||

[maiden tundra]

finished chapter 1: ||my parents love fish's eye and always tell me it will make my eyesight better and while i do love fish i have NEVER eaten its eye because i find it disgusting. yeah i do eat the fish but COME ON ITS THE EYE very relatable i relate hard ||

[honest canyon]

I never even knew people ||ate fish eyes|| before this book

[maiden tundra]

okay so i talked to my mom and she said ||we (they) HAVE NEVER EATEN fish eyes LOL. idk where i heard it from OMG maybe my mind just made that up ||

[brazen yarrow]

i kinda knew it but it didnt help when reading it

[shy grail]

I love how you're making up lore for your family

very mandela effect

[rich sky]

I will never stop proclaiming my love for fish eye

[round sierra]

I wanna try it

[honest canyon]

Do they taste like chapter 7 describe them

[rich sky]

I like forgot how it's described in ch.7 but to be honest I only like the Japanese way of cooking it, I usually eat a fish head whole minus bones of course or share one with my dad when we go to a Japanese restaurant, my dad would always offer us the eyes and would only eat them if my sisters and I say no

We usually eat it grilled with teriyaki sauce (it being the fish head) so the fish eye itself is very like smooth and teriyaki-sweet but also has a crunch from like the softer bones

[maiden tundra]

[honest canyon]

Chapter 15 ||"whoa, whoa. You guys having a pillow fight without me? At least let me watch!" 🤮 ||

[honest canyon]

Chapter 25 ||Geoffrey is giving major "nice guy" vibes ||

[honest canyon]

This book is going by so fast

[white spear]

it is genuinely fast paced which was very nice

[maiden tundra]

i love it omg im thinking of finishing my CR by tonight and will start this right after i finish it

[honest canyon]

Chapter 37 ||EEEEWWWW||

[maiden tundra]

enters with infinity aura

[shy grail]

[timid cedar]

i might join

maybe

[shy grail]

do it!! if you can fit it in this week then I'd totally recommend

[rich sky]

I think you will like this and will have a lot to say about it (in a good way)

[brazen yarrow]

ch 4 people like || her mom|| piss me off so much, they may be the reason we have the expressions along the lines of you are not a tree, you can move. Its just so naive and stupid, i get it bit it pisses me off that || shes so childlike and has no concept of survival instinct||

ch 5 class A manipulator ||“If neither of you care about me, I’ll go crawl in a hole and die. You’ll both wish you were nicer to me when I’m gone.”||

[brazen yarrow]

i get so into the reading that i forget to write my thoughts..
ch 12 ||“I’ve been to China. Have you?”
“N-no, but—”
“Trust me on this. I was in Shanghai for a month in 1987, and this restaurant is so much better than what they have over there. I swear on my mother’s life!”|| im all yucky reading this chapter, its everything i expect ||stereotypical middle aged american man to be. He probably speaks in that unbelievable confidence that uneducated white man have thinking they are geniuses and know it alls...||

[hoary light]

All the men in this gave me the major ick

[rich sky]

Same

And I was eating sushi when I read this so I wanted to vom lots

[brazen yarrow]

ohh im not going near food while reading this

i cant

ch 17 ||“When we go out to eat, we don’t go out for fun. We don’t go out to mess around. We go out to experience culture. Authentic culture. If we don’t have culture, what else do we have? Nothing!”||
its hard to find a quality in him

Ive actually met someone thats similar but not like this to this|| guy, i mean he has a thing for asian girls, im not asian but i do look asian and when his friend kept trying to convince me to go out a second time, saying how hes in love with me and similar bs, he actually pulled up their media history on ig, showing me a bunch of hot looking asian girls and even anime characters as if thats supposed to be a compliment. || You think ||men|| have disappointed you but they find ways to go even lower, every time

[rich sky]

I’m so sorry Maca, that is horrible

[round sierra]

???? The audacity???

And I thought 'looking for goth video game playing mommy' was bad

[maiden tundra]

GOD I JUST STARTED ||AND I HATE THE FATHER (OFC) he reminds me of my own and the mother and the sisters. ITS LIKE MY FAMILY and like my dad is still here but i still wish he wasnt OVERSHARING AHHH. i love the mother and sisters so far tho, yes i hate the fish eye part but other than that it just seems like a normal novel to me LMAOOOO. i love love love the mother she is exactly like my own mother
||

[rich sky]

||I am an Asian girl and sometimes I gag at the sexualisation going on||

[hoary light]

||I'm not Asian but as someone who's been called "exotic" (major gag) by a man before I felt repulsed all the way through this novel. The audacity is never-ending.||

[brazen yarrow]

its fine, it really set in stone my opinion of him

[brazen yarrow]

theres always worse

[round sierra]

So gross 💀

[maiden tundra]

seven:||mothers are always right||

[maiden tundra]

eight:||damn geoffrey pls be good throughout the book||

LMFAOOOOOOO

[maiden tundra]

man i was crying this made me laugh

[maiden tundra]

ten: ||damn umma get some!||

okay i'll sleep now i have uni tomorrow ill read this in the train omw and I'll read till like chapter 36 if i want to get over with this in 2 days

all that kdrama is paying off im pronouncing all the korean terms so nicely in my head🙈

[brazen yarrow]

these reactions scare mee

like what is gonna happen next

[shy grail]

[brazen yarrow]

i was about to keep reading but im eatting

[hoary light]

I felt that ahah

[brazen yarrow]

randomly started a movie on netflix, society of the snow.. if you know you know, i might as well come back to reading, i feel its better than a visual look

[brazen yarrow]

ch 22 ||George grins. “I love the eye. It’s delicious, at least to those of us who appreciate Asian culture.”|| my brown eyes are rolling so far back

[honest canyon]

I loved that movie
Some of the scenes scared me more than horror movies ever have and then knowing it actually happend is horrifying

[maiden tundra]

IKR LMAOOOOO

eleven: ||"With Ji-hyun and me, Umma is stubborn about getting her way. Maybe because she could never defy Appa, not even a little bit" nah thIS IS GETTING WAY TOO RELATABLE||

[maiden tundra]

||ugh nvm umma pls dont be w this man||

[timid cedar]

I started reading this book

I think I'm at chapter 11?

It's really easy to keep along with

OOP IM AT 12

||THIS NEW DUDE SEEMS LIKE A FREAK THE REPUBLICAN CAR STICKER IS ALREADY WORRYING ME||

[white spear]

in || CALIFORNIA || of all places

[timid cedar]

YES

||Also this weird internalised racism Ji-won's mother has is worrying||

||I wonder if Geoffrey will come back into the book, I liked him lol||

[maiden tundra]

same lol

13:||WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST READ||

[timid cedar]

[timid cedar]

im scared

i read the spoiler

I want to begin reading it

[maiden tundra]

LMAO

[timid cedar]

The eye on the cover is looking at me funny

[maiden tundra]

its every bit as scary as you are

[timid cedar]

The way my book is positioned, the eye is staring into my soul

[timid cedar]

So it's the embodiment of

him

cuz he is me

[maiden tundra]

💀💀💀i have soft copy😎

[timid cedar]

that dude is also me

[timid cedar]

OMG

[maiden tundra]

AYO LMAO

[timid cedar]

I COULDNT FIND ANY

(I'm happy i didn't find any paperbacks because now i have a first edition)

[maiden tundra]

[timid cedar]

This is my cover

What is yours

[maiden tundra]

same

[timid cedar]

OH

I love

[maiden tundra]

end of chapter 13:||ofc it was george's eyes ||

14:||WTF DID SHE DO TO HER OLD FRIENDS||

14: ||very sus omg whats wrong with alexis, im sure theres something wrong with geoffrey||

NAH ||WHO ARE YOU FOOLING WITH YOUR SUS BEHAVIOUR biatch||

[maiden tundra]

18: ||oh ji-won you saboteur||

19: ||dont make me dislike you ji-won😭😭😭😭😭😭😭WHY||

[brazen yarrow]

i stopped during the ||beginning part when ones about to put a skin scab to his mouth.. i really cant watch people eatting ||

but i hear its based on the book from one of them so im intrigued to read that too

[brazen yarrow]

ch 29||It was romantic|| spoiler, its really not

[nocturne crow]

Starting this one

[brazen yarrow]

ch 37/38 im scared to keep reading i need to eat breakfast... this book is really uncomfortable for me

[shy grail]

||The way I thought Alexis was the only one who didn’t have something wrong with her ||

[subtle owl]

I’m starting this todayyy

[maiden tundra]

||EVERYONE HAS SOMETHING WRONG||

[maiden tundra]

LOL omg i cannot wait to read

[maiden tundra]

20: ||What is it like to live freely, to live a life untethered, without having to be responsible for everyone around you? ||

||why the fuck is she sooooooo obsessed with george's eyes||

[subtle owl]

Okay I started this now, had some guests home for most of today
I really like how the chapters are super short

[shy grail]

I'm happy so many people are reading it atm

[subtle owl]

Ch.2
||I see how the writing could make something regular feel quite uncomfy and distressing. I have a little anecdote of fish eyes too! I’m not really a fish eater though I do enjoy other seafood but I remember as a kid (like a 5 year old) we’d been having some fried fish (head and eye intact) and my sister basically dared me to eat the eye and I was horrified but she said it makes you intelligent or like see stuff better or idk some other crap like that. I didn’t eat it anyway but she did and idk the whole description just reminded me of that incident ||

[shy grail]

||Okay but did it work? Because that would be so cool if it did and she ended up with better eyesight/more intelligent||

[subtle owl]

Nooope, I ||ended up being the smarter kid despite our 7-year difference ||

[timid cedar]

29 percent in!!

I think I’m at chapter 18

Yeah beginning of chapter 18

Overall thoughts for everything I’ve read: ||I HATE GEORGE HE IS A FREAK He is such a weirdo BUT ALSO WHY IS JI-WON SO OBSESSED WITH HIS EYES||

||And her mother She’s clearly unstable||

[subtle owl]

We’re on the same part!

[timid cedar]

YESSS

We are interlinked

Soul sisters

[brazen yarrow]

we are about to double the read number hahahah

[brazen yarrow]

ch 43 ||At night, while she sits in front of the TV, Umma works on altering her dress.|| If i really feel bad for someone its ||her, cause she just has nothing of her own to stand up on and is used to always relying on a man to help her up... and i cant be mad at her for the life shes had||

[hoary light]

It was really hard for me to understand how to feel about ||Umma since I never had a family member like her. On one hand, I felt for her past and how she was just easily moved by men (foreign, intelligent, wealthier men living in a country that only teared her down). On the other hand, she had two amazing daughters (albeit damaged and psycho ) who needed her the most at those times.||

[rich sky]

||My mum is kind of like Umma and I don’t speak to her AT ALL except if I’m screaming at her or she is screaming at me. When I read this book the frustration felt by the fmc like tripled inside of me because it just reminded me of my own mother ||

[brazen yarrow]

mmm ||I cant compare her to other moms tho.. shes used to having someone make the decisions and just follow blindly, she doesnt seem mature, emotionally to be a proper parent, shes just grasping at whatever life gives her... however I do hate people like this that are so weak and lost and just fragile almost.. they piss me off for being so gullible and childlike at moments||

ch 45... theres never a good time for this book or i eat a wholelot

i have a phobia of anything touching eyes.. i cant put eye drops or sit still for someone else to do it, just not gonna happen

and also I get squirmish regarding food and whats eatable and not to me

this book is just horror for me

[subtle owl]

I’m so grateful to you for this!!

I was weirded out by the scene in ch.13 so kinda wondering how much more graphic and creepy things would get

Enjoying it all the same though, I’m kinda invested in the story so can skim through the parts that make me uncomfy

I read until Ch.19 last night. Sharing thoughts before I continue on
||So I kinda liked the MC until I suppose ch.18 or like the stuff she does to break apart her friend group and like I understand where she’s coming from but it’s still quite horrid and it’s framing the MC’s character up in my mind and with the constant eye dreams, my brain’s going ‘beware George, you are not safe or welcome here’. I honestly don’t like any of the characters here and I believe they were written so on purpose. Geoffrey seemed good initially but is slightly creeping me out too now. I’m hoping he stays good though. I like how the author’s sorta given backgrounds to certain reactionary responses of the different characters and it helps build their character sketches in my mind better. All the eye dreams so far have been creeeepy and foreshadowy so I’m not really looking forward to that ||

[maiden tundra]

man i didnt read much today

ill read at night if i get sometime i was BOMBARDED with assignments today

[brazen yarrow]

Just a heads up this ends i think on the 1st, so 3 days left to finish @maiden tundra @honest canyon @timid cedar @nocturne crow @subtle owl u have some weird ass chapters coming up good luck

[maiden tundra]

thabk you

[subtle owl]

I plan on finishing this today but I know I’ll need all the luck cuz my next read’s #1258687633966497814 and idk how reading these back to back would be

[rich sky]

THIS IS SO FUNNY IM SO SORRY

The title mainly

[subtle owl]

I knooooow, idk how I ended up keeping these two until they’re to be read consecutively like EYES everywhere

[rich sky]

https://tenor.com/view/looking-good-gif-21504526

[shy grail]

I was going to do a ping tomorrow but thank you for saving me a job

[shy grail]

it's almost like you're being followed

honestly I think they're good to read closely followed together because they do kinda share some themes

[brazen yarrow]

ch 57 oh dear this feels like a flashback ughh make it end ||Trust me, Ji-won, if you let me, you’d like me. I swear. Is it because I’m white?”
“No! That’s not it at all—”
“I’m a nice person, okay? I’m not like those other guys you know.||

its always the ||im a nice guy|| people

[white spear]

i did the same thing, i thought it was a good juxtaposition

[maiden tundra]

okay imma continue

[brazen yarrow]

ch58 i kind of want || her to keep delusional and never be discovered? but i study criminalistics and shes so sloppy||

[subtle owl]

I’m hoping it to be! I just don’t want to be traumatised and see blue eyes everywhere after the experience

Also abi, I just realised you’re hosting both BRs. Was it intentional or a coincidence

[shy grail]

Honestly just a coincidence

[white spear]

uh huh. abi blue eye era confirmed

[shy grail]

I have always liked blue eyes....

[hoary light]

https://tenor.com/view/skz-straykids-hyunjin-chan-bangchan-gif-17929297

[subtle owl]

Until ch. 30
||I know the daughters are half psychotic and I know there’s a reason why the mother is the way that she is and I know there’s too much at play that I can’t be blaming anyone but like I really hate it when parents can’t see past their rose coloured glasses when in a relationship. Granted it’s hard for them I know plus kids are generally not very accepting of new partners their parents get but George is such a clear douche and he’s making the girls uncomfortable and like she’s off marrying him??? ugh

Lowkey worried Jiwon’s going to turn into a serial killer with George her first victim. I’m not too keen on Geoffrey too now and suspect him to be like the person following her and not George but let’s see||

[timid cedar]

AHAH I’m excited

I’m 22 chapters in I think

||her obsession with George is really weird ||

||AND HER FRIEDNS WHO LEFT HER, GOOD JOB||

||I wonder why Geoffrey doesn’t like Alexis. Does he not like people of colour, is he just another Asian fetishiser? George is such a freak for being like he is, BUT JI-WON LISTENING TO HIM BREATHING IN HIS SLEEP THROUGH THE WALL??? HELLO????||

||Her dreams are getting cray cray and I love||

[maiden tundra]

27 chapters in ||ugh i wish george would just leave i hate him the most||

man im so tired HOW DO I READ

[brazen yarrow]

trying to find out if shes a queer author for my summer bingo prompts, and look at this special cover she shared. U can apply for the giveaway on her ig, its usa only tho

[timid cedar]

UGH I NEED THAT

[hoary light]

this is incredible

[brazen yarrow]

ch 66 so what just happened? ||what was her plan here really? im so confused, also brain tumor? maybe thats why she wanted the eyes? or shes just like that regardless?||.. i dont know whats coming next honestly

[brazen yarrow]

xh 72 ||It’s a no-brainer. An open-and-shut case.|| except ||her everything is all over everything and also.. i dont think shes such good actress. It didnt work with her friends, i doubt it will work with her. Her fingerprints will be on the other knife in her backpack.. ||

ohh im done huh

[rich sky]

This is triggering my trypophobia so bad but very cute

[dapper elbow]

This is triggering
my trypophobia so
bad but very cute

- Jana 🦦

[shy grail]

I want it now

I thought you didn’t like it but I just saw your GR rating

[maiden tundra]

thr first picture is from ||when ji won had the dream she was in the cupboard sized room?||

[brazen yarrow]

the book made me uncomfortable due to the ||way things are described|| but i couldnt put it down i kept thinking about it, i passionately ||hated the characters||

i dont think ive read books in this type of genre or style and i def would like more

[brazen yarrow]

could be, def a good visual representation

also i was ready to keep reading and i swiped on my epub and it was the acknowledgements... i was like the heck? thats it

i wanted more tbh

[subtle owl]

I’m almost through! My family decided to do a movie night on a weekday and I kinda lost my nightly reading time there

[maiden tundra]

man im bombarded with assignments i WANT TO FINSIH THIS

hopefully if i finish my assignments by sunday i can binge read this all sunday

[timid cedar]

Bunny by Mona Awad is sort of like this

[rich sky]

I second Bunny by Mona Awad

[timid cedar]

MONA AWAD HAS JUST ACKNOWLEXGES MY EXISTENCE BY LIKING MY COMMENT ON HER POST

Anyways

I hope to finish today

[shy grail]

guys you should all join the Bloom BR for good vibes

[timid cedar]

Maybe

[rich sky]

You are the luckiest

[rich sky]

I SECOND THIS TOTALLY NOT BIASED

[brazen yarrow]

oooo i have that on my tbr i believe

the pink cover?

[timid cedar]

Yesss

It’s such a fever dream

[brazen yarrow]

sweet thank uu

[subtle owl]

I finished you guys and wow
||I skipped and skimmed through most of the graphic scenes but the one at the start, the dream sequence is kinda etched deeply in my mind and I’m currently trying to take my mind off that since it’s clouding everything else about the book but wow. This was one weirdly creepy interesting read. || I’m going to return here and share full thoughts once I’m home and have digested the book better

[maiden tundra]

I WANT TO READ

[keen mango]

[maiden tundra]

but ugh assignments

i finished my two day assignment today tho i can DEF READ TOMORROW

[shy grail]

tomorrow is your last day 🫡

[maiden tundra]

oh what if i still have a few chapters left for sunday

i also got uni tomorrow

[shy grail]

I will forgive you if that happens

and still let you finish

[maiden tundra]

ill try to finish this by tomorrow

[shy grail]

no it's okay if you need a couple of days after

[subtle owl]

Full thoughts now - ||I kinda feel like I’ll have a love/hate relationship with this book cuz it was all grizzly gruesome yet the pacing, writing etc were done well! I hated all the characters but like I could also see parts of humans I’ve known in them and like everything was quite real and detestable and like even the way Jiwon just kills people, I felt it was done realistically. The brain tumour took me by surprise and i was kinda hoping it’d get to something like her tumour affecting a part of her brain that makes her delusional and all and she didn’t actually commit those crimes but her mind just associating and linking stuff together that way but sigh

I knew she’d be pinning it all in Geoffrey and much as I detested that character, I felt a lil pang of sympathy for him being caught on the scene like a deer in the headlights and also questions like if he’d followed her everywhere, how did he not know about everything she does. How is he so unaware and so deep in his obsession that self preservation’s never considered? I half expected him to blackmail her to get together with him with the knowledge he’s got but apparently he’s unaware? Also, how does she get away leaving no trace or dna like are the officials just that lousy and not really doing a full investigation when there’s a definite pattern of serial killings going on? I really do enjoy books that explore the psyche of criminals and I like how the characters here were kinda relatable but like you could see the psychopathy within all the same. I’m not sorry for the dad and for what he has coming nor am I too sorry for George but I do feel bad for the innocent ones who get targeted for their blue eyes. ||

This was quite an interesting read and I’m so glad we got to buddy read this because I’m quite certain I wouldn’t have picked this book otherwise (that cover anti-recs the book to me instantaneously) I only got in here because of abi’s description in the br request and I’m glad to have given it a chance now! I’m never going to be able to see eyes (blue ones specifically) the same way again

Thanks for hosting abi!

[shy grail]

||Yeah, I was surprised that Geoffrey didn't blackmail her too tbh but unless he didn't because he was a 'nice guy' I really do not know. ||

Thank you for joining Hanzy

[maiden tundra]

33: ||ew||

34: ||BOOOO GEORGE||

35: ||omg wtf, she isnt imagining||

[maiden tundra]

i cant wait to reach chapter 37 AHHH BUT I HAVE A MEETING TO ATTEND

[shy grail]

[maiden tundra]

37: ||NOOOOOO EW PLEASE||

||NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO||

[hoary light]

[maiden tundra]

cannot wait for 45 now

40: ||ji-hyun is cute i love her||

||"She drops George’s eyes into the trash can. I feel the urge to reach over and pull them back out" GIRL ITS A CARD NOT THE REAL EYES STOP||

man i have ANOTHER meeting in 15 mins

THIS IS GOING SO GOOD I WANNA KNOW WHAT HAPPENS AHHH

[honest canyon]

Chapter 38 ||Okay it's not even a human eyeball it's an yeball that's been on the floor of a public bathroom ||

[maiden tundra]

omg im on 45 now

45: ||NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO WHAT THE FUCK||

||STOP||

||I WILL THROW UP||

https://tenor.com/view/qoobee-gif-10865817

waiting for 54 now

this is nice, it gives me something to look forward to no matter how creepy it is

[shy grail]

I love how you're wanting to get to the creepy stuff and then how you're reacting when you actually do

[maiden tundra]

LMAOOO

[honest canyon]

it was not a good idea to read this right before eating dinner

[maiden tundra]

@timid cedar have you finished this

[timid cedar]

Halfway through

[maiden tundra]

same lol

I'll be done in an hour if i keep reading

should i keep reading

yes i should

[shy grail]

yes, keep reading

[maiden tundra]

54: ||AYO WHAT THE FUCK||

||oh she is hallucinating||

||DISGUSTING||

||omg theres a car||

||how does an eye taste good EW||

waiting for 65 now

57:|| i love umma omg||

58: ||omg does everyone know||

||man ji won is crazy ong||

omg only twelve chapters to go WOHOOOOOOO

61: ||wtf geoffrey you bastard||

omg im at 65 now

||a thing i wanted to mention was ji won using the picture of alexis's friend for her fake dating profile it was very wrong||

omg im actually excited for 65 ||george gets to die||

[honest canyon]

why did i open this spoiler

[maiden tundra]

OMG AMANDA

waiting for 70

68: ||omg kill george with oleander ||

[keen mango]

3 MORE CHAPTERS

[maiden tundra]

70: ||UGHHHHHHHHHHHHH||

||BUT ||

71: ||OHMYGOD WTF WTF WTF WTF||

||pinning it all to geoffrey omg idk if i should be happy or angry||

i finished

||girl leave your father alone ||

[white spear]

but || his eyes look tasty ||

[maiden tundra]

LMAOAOAOAOAO

[timid cedar]

Oh!!

Oh!!!!

Chapter 38

Oh!!!!!!!!!

[timid cedar]

Oh my god this book is crazy

I’m at chapter 59

61: ||Geoffrey is such a freak I can’t believe I ever liked him||

||Hes just as bad as George, if not worse.||

ALSO I KNEW IT WAS ||Geoffrey who was following her from the start because of the brown eyes ||

[timid cedar]

OH MY GOD I JUST FINISHED

AHHHHHHHH

FIVE STARS

I LOVE

TEN TENTHS

||Ji-won is so cray cray and I love it ||

I WAS AUDIBLY GASPING AT SEVERAL SCENES AND GRIMACING

Sometimes I laughed which made me feel like a psycho

[timid cedar]

Ugh I’m eating right now and I can’t stop picturing and feeling eyeballs popping in my mouth

[shy grail]

hope you eat some eyeballs for halloween this year

I'm so glad you enjoyed it though!

[shy grail]

are you still trying to get through it?

[honest canyon]

yes i will do a readathon today where i will finish this and #1258687633966497814

[shy grail]

that's okay don't push yourself to finish them if you need a little more time

I hope you enjoy them both though

[timid cedar]

I will

I should dress up as a blue eyeball for Halloween

[maiden tundra]

yeah it was obvious but i couldnt figure it out

[maiden tundra]

it actually took two hours

[maiden tundra]

this was such an interesting read i dont think ive read such a creepy book before

[timid cedar]

Now u have to read The Troop by Nick Cutter

[maiden tundra]

[shy grail]

will you be able to get to this today or tomorrow?

[honest canyon]

i will finish it today sorry i keep getting delayed

[shy grail]

it's okay! I just didn't want to end the BR without you if you were still reading

[maiden tundra]

you can do it amanda!

[shy grail]

[jade tendon]

I will also finish the book today

[maiden tundra]

you can do it<3

[shy grail]

oh, I didn't realise you were reading this one
how far through are you?

[maiden tundra]

same i saw in #892667887343521863 then came here

[timid cedar]

That emote is really scary

[shy grail]

but he’s just so happy to be here

[timid cedar]

[shy grail]

[timid cedar]

Pepe starve is how I looked reading this book

Starege

Not starve

[rich sky]

LMFAO SMOGAL

Pepe’s eyes fit the book too

[maiden tundra]

[jade tendon]

yeah I started it last night, currently am on chapter 47 42 sorry

my cousin's wedding events threw off my reading schedule. I wasn't gonna read this until I saw people still reading it. (idm not getting reading points for it tho).

[jade tendon]

she's so unhinged

[jade tendon]

chapter 45 ||wtf did I just read that was gruesome||

[maiden tundra]

[jade tendon]

just finished chapter 55 ||she is psychotic. she randomly killed people and chewed their eyes ||

i once watched this video of an eyeball being dropped from an height (made for scientific purposes) to test how sturdy human eyes are. and the eyeballs literally bounced a couple of times - so || I just have a hard time imagining her not chocking on that ||

[maiden tundra]

ohmygod

[honest canyon]

Chapter 48 ||"Jen us nothing but a pawn in George's game. Just like Umma." I'm glad she isn't blaming Jen ||

[jade tendon]

|| yeah they also didn't blame their father's new partner for 'breaking up their family.' ||

[honest canyon]

Chapter 53 ||Okay ji-won is being stupid now the cop saw her ID and got a clear view of the guys face it won't take alot for him to put 2 and 2 together||

I just realized I'm reading this right before dinner again

[shy grail]

[honest canyon]

Start chapter 54 ||Oof not a human bite that's not gonna be fun and hard to explain||

[jade tendon]

Geoffrey is so annoying. ||From personal experience i hate the I'm-a-nice-guy give me a chance folks bc they're not nice. their niceness has an agenda. they expect something in return of their niceness which isn't really being nice. ||

chapter 66 wait what

||brain tumour?? sometimes it's hard to keep up with her hallucinations, dreams and what really happened. Does the tumour explain her recent behaviour? but apparently she's had it her whole life... ||

omg I finally finished it

[hoary light]

I believe it's ||meant to be open-ended, as in... it could definitely explain some of the things... but definitely not all of the craziness ||

[jade tendon]

yeah definitely || even after her tumor gets removed she did that||

[jade tendon]

1.|| i don't think I would. she literally murdered innocent people. she has a sinister vibe - trying to feed her younger sister that poison plant despite being told not to touch it. ||
2.|| If someone's detached from reality then they need professional help ig ||

[rich sky]

completely agree w/ your first point

[honest canyon]

chapter 55 ||what wouuld her breath smell like after eating 2 raw bloody and dirty eyeballs ||

[maiden tundra]

omg

[maiden tundra]

1. no
2. psychologist (me )

nah she didnt make the right choices

[honest canyon]

chapter 58 ||does anyone also have a spelling mistake on the last page?||

[jade tendon]

final thoughts.
|| I liked this book. I feel like if Rouge and Earthlings had a child this would be that book. Although I wasn't rooting for her like I legit thought she would kill herself after that, I was really impressed with how she managed to get Geoffrey to take the blame at the end. I disliked him but I also feel bad for him and thought he's so stupid to stalk a serial killer. More than George I disliked the mother - she practically let a stranger move in with them despite knowing her daughters don't like to have him around. I'm glad George died "I'm a man that's how we are" no you're a racist, a creep, a pedo, & a fetisher. I like complicated characters & I like to judge them for their choices but Ji-won was so damn unhinged I couldn't judge her. She was a spectacular monster. Some parts of the plot were movie-like, for instance, her changing his presentation overnight. The tumour part was something I didn't see coming. It doesn't explain her actions completely so I don't really understand the need of having that which literally spans for like 2 chapters - maybe the author needed a hospital setup to carry out the last part lmao. ||

[honest canyon]

Chapter 69 ||when I was in the hospital my dad got sent home from work because he was to nervous to be of any use and I wasn't even hospitalized for anything very serious I can't imagine my dad not showing up after a life threatening surgery||

I finished

||im really not sure what to think of this book it was really good at the gross stuff and was very fast paced and easy to read but the ending felt a little rushed and out of the blue especially with her still having the craving for blue eyes even after the tumor was removed one of my neighbors where I used to live actually beat his wife to death because of a brain tumor so this reminded me of this I think I will eate it 4/5 stars||

[shy grail]

omg that is such a spooky real life story
||Alex brought this up earlier but I think it's so the reader can blame some of her behaviour on the tumour if they want but dep down she's just messed up and would probably still be like that without the tumour. I think 4 stars was the average though so I'm glad you liked it||

[thin trench]

@shy grail,@white spear,@honest canyon,@subtle owl,@round sierra,@brazen yarrow,@rich sky,@lime tangle,@sage lava,@high wyvern,@maiden tundra,@jade tendon,@vernal nexus,@nocturne crow

Hi all! I think everyone who was reading this book has now finished so this BR has come to a close. Thank you for joining me in this creepy, atmospheric tale of madness, revenge, and social commentary.

Read: jana, castral, abi, Celine, Alex, Vaude, Maca, Hanzy, smeagy, Ayesha, Amanda, mimosa

If I have missed you off the list then please let me know, and happy reading with whatever book you pick up next <3

[rich sky]

thank you for hosting this abi!!

[jade tendon]

I'll never forget this book thank you for requesting this book as a BR

[shy grail]

thank you for joining jana and providing really good chapter markers for the tws

[white spear]

thanks for hosting abi!

[hoary light]

Thank you so much for hosting this, abi!!

[subtle owl]

Thanks for hosting abi!

[brazen yarrow]

im reading the replies so maybe someone wrote this already but || the guy has a hat on and i think hes like side or face down so by no means has the cop seen his face||

[honest canyon]

Oh okay but it was still a stupid risk

[shy grail]

I don't think she was thinking rationally at any point

[brazen yarrow]

definately

Thank you abi for hosting, love finding new gems through these buddy reads and this was fantastic

i already found blue eyes kinda creepy now ill always be reminded of this book

[timid cedar]

YES U SEE ME

Blue eyes are creepy

everyone thinks I'm weird for saying it

blue eyes stare into ur soul

[shy grail]

[maiden tundra]

thank you for hosting this abi<3

[round sierra]

I will remember this Smeagy...

[timid cedar]

Are you blue eyed

[round sierra]

Yes

[maiden tundra]

https://www.instagram.com/p/DAS5-F7NT2-/?igsh=bW5teGdhdm04Y2c3