Ji-won’s life turns upside down after her father leaves the family to live with his mistress. Ji-won is left alone with her mother and younger sister Ji-hyun. Her mother (Umma) is a mess, and her younger sister needs someone to help her through a tough time, as she is hurt and confused. Ji-won’s life becomes a constant support to her family. After a time, it starts to look like her mother met someone. She starts texting with someone, and Ji-won can hear her giggle like a teenager. Soon, she will discover that her mother has met a new man. His name is George, and to say the least, he is a creep. He fetishises Asian women and even calls Ji-won ‘oriental’.
This is also a time when we see a change in our main character. We delved deeper into Ji-won’s mind, and there we can see her increasing obsession with eating eyeballs. That starts with eating fish eyeballs, which her mother religiously eats every time they have fish, as Koreans believe it can bring good luck.
Then nightmares start. Throughout many chapters, we have vivid dreams that make Ji-won even more obsessed with eyes, and now especially with one pair of eyes. Blue eyes that belong to her mother’s new boyfriend, George. Family dynamics change a lot, and it is hard for sisters to accept this new boyfriend who starts to live with them and treats them without respect, and to say that at least is racist. Umma is over the moon and begins to plan the wedding. Ji-won needs to do something with it, but what? Kill George? Or focus more on his beautiful blue eyes, which she wants to cut out and see if they will pop in her mouth like fish eyes, or will they be as salty as fish eyes?
What crazy idea will drive our main character further?
This book was quite nice, and it was refreshing. I never read anything like that. I was expecting this book to be scarier, but it was not. The dreams were repetitive, too, and after a while, I grew tired of them and wanted to move on. The other thing I wasn’t the biggest fan of was character development. Again, we have some poorly developed characters with no depth or personality. I wish this aspect were better.
Overall, not a bad book!
I would give it 3.5/5