Review by booksanna - The Eyes Are the Best Part

booksanna 's review for:

The Eyes Are the Best Part by Monika Kim

5.0

dark emotional funny mysterious fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I really enjoyed this book as I read it in almost all in one sitting. The way the chapters are written and organized to reveal just a sliver of intriguing information always left me wanting to know more. The pacing and details we very well written and well-placed. Horror is not really my genere, but I really enjoyed this book as it other complex themes(racism, family dynamics in an Asian household, relationships, and hunger) besides the later horror.

I will say some things did suprise me specifically

Ji-won is advertised as a serial killer on the blurb, but I felt like she didn’t display the typical serial killer vibes of being heartless, or having a passion for killing, or a specific method of killing. I do understand that her main reason for killing was her insatiable hunger for blue eyes and justice against the racist white men, but I felt the tittle of serial killer wasn’t fully fitting for her. It was more like she killed people because she wanted to eat their eyes. This is not necessary a bad thing, it just struck me as interesting developement
The book had less body horror than I expected (don’t get me wrong there were a lot of eye quivering moments
especially the textures and flavors of eating eyes
). But I expected a little more body horror, and most of the horror was psychological.
I wish the characters were a little more complex/diverse in their portrayal. I understand we see all of them from Ji-won’s perspective meaning we already get a biased view of them, but I felt like all the white men were portrayed horribly/stereotypically
like the guys in the coffee shop, and Geoffrey and George all could be based on real people that Asian have to deal with in their lives, but I feel like other men characters could be portrayed, didn’t even have to be a major character, could have been a barista or a classmate who was nice
. I understand it’s important for the feminist message the author is trying to demonstrate, but it would be nice to have a nice example of a white man that could be used to amplify how horrible the other men were.
To be fair I understand if there was such character, Ji-won’s hatred for white men would not be as strong probably ruing her character motivations
How funny the book actually was, both in the writing style and the dialogue of the characters. Like one time
after Alexis pointed out to the MC about the strangeness of Geoffrey, the next time we saw Geoffrey she described his eyes as unappetizing rot or something like and I was so thrown aback because in the previous chapter her and Geoffrey were best buds. Girl switched her mind so fast. And the dry humor of Ji-won’s narration was pretty funny. Like the one time where she was late to class and the teacher was giving her a hard time and she was talking about how she ate a homeless man’s eye ball, so sorry she wan’t in the best mood. Like it was quite funny./spoiler>

My favorite characters were Alexis and Ji-hyun because they felt like the most rational and reasonable characters. Also I totally ship

Alexis and Ji-won, if those don’t have a drunken make out session in a sequel, that shall forever be my head cannon. No way my home girl was being awoken multiple times in the night to comfort Ji-won. Like girls, none of you are straight, please just kiss already.

This got me out of a reading slump, would recommend.

Content Warnings