
Member Reviews

This is a chilling unsettling look at a Korean/American girl who slowly begins a descent into becoming a serial killer.
When her father leaves for another woman, her, her younger sister, and their mother are devastated. The richly detailed backgrounds of this family and how they got to where they are is told with a depth that automatically makes you feel sympathetic towards their plight.
When the mother starts dating a white man, things start spiraling out of control. This man is a true example of white privilege and he exhudes an air of superiority. He's also a cheat, and has eyes set on younger Asian women and girls. Their mother is clueless and she believes him to be a knight in shining armour to make their lives better. But the sisters know better.
Told in first person perspective, the older sister begins to have fantasies about this man dying and she dreams about one day being able to eat his eyes. But when her twisted fantasies provide an opportunity to experience the thrill of it all, she takes advantage of several men along the way.
You want to feel a small level of vindication for her. The men she experiences all have the worst traits of toxicity in some form or another. But as her desires continue to grow and start throwing her academic and personal life into chaos, her anger soon overtakes any guilt she might have had.
We'll also find out some things about her from the past that were probably red flags to begin with. But it seems this situation unleashed those hidden desires and she relishes the chance to murder and eat the eyes of her victims.
This novel is not a gore fest, nor should it have been. This one unfolds at a tension building pace and each chapter is short, to the point, and wonderfully written. The progression from fantasy to reality is unnerving and terrifying to watch unfold.
I loved this book and I highly recommend it.

This book is going to haunt me for a while. I will definitely have to reread it.
The Eyes Are the Best Part is a fast-paced horror I finished in one night. The synopsis was so striking that I had to pick it up. I generally don’t read the horror genre, but the voice-y prose made me love genre conventions I usually don’t gravitate toward. There are some gory parts, but they didn’t bother me, and it all served the story/wasn’t excessive, which I appreciated. The writing was
This story was gruesome, yet by peeling back the layers, I found a tender story about family and womanhood. While I read, the characters were all vivid, real people whom I had encountered in my own life as a mixed Asian woman. (Who hasn’t met a Geoffrey in a freshman-year philosophy course?) And though a bit unhinged, Gi-won resonated with me, especially as the eldest daughter who struggles to keep her family together.
All in all, I would highly recommend this book, especially if you love unhinged female protagonists but find the current landscape lacking a little color)
Thank you to Edelweiss and Erewhon for the e-ARC.