Review: The Eyes Are the Best Part, by Monika Kim

Title: The Eyes Are the Best Part 

Author: Monika Kim

Publisher: Erewhon Books

Genre: Horror

Date of Publication: June 25th, 2024

Number of Pages: 278

See it on Goodreads: The Eyes Are the Best Part

Summary

Ji-won’s life tumbles into disarray in the wake of her appa’s extramarital affair and subsequent departure. Her mother, distraught. Her younger sister, hurt and confused. Her college freshman grades, failing. Her dreams, horrifying… yet enticing.

In them, Ji-won walks through bloody rooms full of eyes. Succulent blue eyes. Salivatingly blue eyes. Eyes the same shape and shade as George’s, who is Umma’s obnoxious new boyfriend. George has already overstayed his welcome in her family’s claustrophobic apartment. He brags about his puffed-up consulting job, ogles Asian waitresses while dining out, and acts condescending toward Ji-won and her sister as if he deserves all of Umma’s fawning adoration. No, George doesn’t deserve anything from her family. Ji-won will make sure of that.

For no matter how many victims accumulate around her campus or how many people she must deceive and manipulate, Ji-won’s hunger and her rage deserve to be sated.

Review - Satisfy Your Craving

In my recent post, I talked about how I want to read more horror books. So, I've started tackling that horror TBR with The Eyes Are the Best Part, a book that has been on my radar for a while. 

Getting into this book, I really didn't know how I would feel. Even though, more and more books are coming out with themes of cannibalism, this would be my first attempt at it. And just by looking at this cover, you know what you are getting into.

In The Eyes Are the Best Part, we are following Ji-won. The story starts when her father abandons them for his lover, leaving her mom devastated. After this event, Umma takes the habit of eating fish eyes, and during one of those times, Ji-won actually tries one herself despite her disgust. 

But things, really start going downhill when George enters the picture. He is a white man, clearly fetishizing Asian women, and disrupts their daily lives. Ji-won can see that he's not good for Umma, but she is so taken with him, with the prospect that she is going to rebuild her life, that she doesn't want to ruin that for her. 

However, George's presence has an unexpected effect - Ji-Won starts obsessing over his eyes. She starts having nightmares filled with eyeballs and her desires keeps growing by the day. But there is a catch: she only wants to taste blue eyes, just like the ones George has. The action takes its time to arrive, but when it does it's definitely worth it. If you are expecting to get straight to the point, you will be disappointed.

There are so many things that I enjoyed in this book. It's clearly a book that describes the Asian-American experience, the fetishization of Asian women (and we don't see that just in George), and how dangerous guys that appear as allies are (I'm looking at you, Geoffrey). Honestly, this is an amazing good for her story, and it's definitely not the last one of its type that I'll be reading. 

The book kept my interest high throughout the story, and I read it pretty quickly. The chapters were really short, which definitely helped in that. Plus, the writing style was simple and straightforward. Apart from the nightmares, which in a couple of cases had me second-guessing if this was reality, the rest of the narration flowed so easily. However, I have to say that the simplicity was, at times, too much, so much so that it felt too young (and that became more apparent once I started a new book the day I finished this one). 

But, ultimately, what bothered me the most was Ji-Won's character. Her obsession with eyes came too suddenly, and I would have loved to explore that more. In addition to this, Ji-Won did something very very questionable to her high-school friends, and when they confront her, she just wants to pretend that it never happened. I won't lie that this thing alone, turned me off of her character. If you are going to be unhinged, at least own it. 

All in all, The Eyes Are the Best Part was a book that I enjoyed for the most part. Even though reading those vivid descriptions of eyeballs was challenging, I found it so intriguing and the ending made it worth the while. Of course, I would recommend that you look trigger warning before picking it up as it discusses several serious topics.

Read more of my reviews here.