Ji-won’s family life is thrown for a loop when her father abruptly leaves her mother for another woman. Distraught and hopeless, Ji-won’s Umma longs for companionship while holding out hope her husband eventually returns. This all changes when Ji-won’s mother meets George, a middle-aged white man with questionable motives. Ji-won, overwhelmed from both a stressful home life and the increasing demands of her university classes, begins to have intense dreams about eating eyeballs. This is somewhat manageable, that is until her ocular appetite reaches beyond her nightmares into reality.

I was looking to get my hands on as many horror novels as possible during the spooky season last month and Monika Kim’s serial killer novel shot right to the top of my list. After finishing the book, I wasn’t quite sure that what I had read was actually horror. Was this more of a thriller? Is it important to fit novels inside of a genre box? I can’t answer that. I can certainly say it was unnerving at parts; mostly when it came down to the graphic descriptions of Ji-won chowing down on eyeballs.

Ji-won is a cleverly crafted character who, despite her abhorrent actions, is hard to paint as a total villain. Her main adversary in George is a dumpster-fire of a human being, so it’s easy not to feel bad when Ji-won begins targeting him. No spoilers here, but the last quarter of the book is where things truly shine and even though I found the first half a bit of a slog to get through at times, Kim sticks the landing in the end.