The Girl From The WellAuthor: Rin Chupeco
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Publication Date: August 5, 2014
Synopsis:
You may think me biased, being murdered myself. But my state of being has nothing to do with the curiosity toward my own species, if we can be called such. We do not go gentle, as your poet encourages, into that good night.
A dead girl walks the streets.
She hunts murderers. Child killers, much like the man who threw her body down a well three hundred years ago.
And when a strange boy bearing stranger tattoos moves into the neighborhood so, she discovers, does something else. And soon both will be drawn into the world of eerie doll rituals and dark Shinto exorcisms that will take them from American suburbia to the remote valleys and shrines of Aomori, Japan.
Because the boy has a terrifying secret - one that would just kill to get out.
ReviewRemember when Japanese horror movies were all the rage? Well, The Girl from the Well channels Japanese horror, a la` The Ring and The Grudge, and reinvents the story of the girl from down the well giving her a back story.
The Girl from the Well begins with the ghost killing a
killer. It starts off very violently and honestly I was ready to DNF it right
there. I wasn’t sure it was my thing, but I read on and I am glad I did!
Rin Chupeco has a very distinctive style of writing and I
think this style lent itself well to the horror story atmosphere. I also liked
that the feeling she created wasn’t lost when the characters left America and visited Japan .
I really enjoyed how Chupeco made a character who is made
out to be a villain in the movies the heroine of this story. It was interesting
to see more of her back story and discover how she came to be at the bottom of
a well.
I also liked the inclusion in the story of Japanese doll’s
and Shinto exorcisms. It is something I’m not very familiar with and I loved
watching the old and new Japan
meet.
Overall, The Girl from the Well was a dark and atmospheric novel. I enjoyed the setting, and found the story to be fresh and original.
Overall, The Girl from the Well was a dark and atmospheric novel. I enjoyed the setting, and found the story to be fresh and original.
Despite an unsettling resemblance to Japanese revenants, Rin always maintains her sense of hummus. Born and raised in Manila, Philippines, she keeps four pets: a dog, two birds, and a husband. Dances like the neighbors are watching.About The Author
Her work, The Girl from the Well, is a YA psychological horror novel due out in Fall 2014, pitched as "Dexter" meets "The Grudge". She is represented by Nicole LaBombard and Rebecca Podos of the Helen Rees Agency.
Wow, I've seen this book around, but I'd never really given a second look at it. It's definitely something that I'm interested in now. I never really read the synopsis, but now that I know it's borderline horror, I'm intrigued. The only Asian horror flick I've seen is The Grudge, and that scared the crap out of me. I'm definitely not a horror-oriented person, but this book just sounds so interesting.
ReplyDeleteGreat review! :)
Tori @ Bookish Affairs
The Grudge scared me so much!! I am definitely not a horror movie person at all, but the book wasn't as scary as those movies (although the first chapter was super creepy).
DeleteExcellent execution, with interesting action right up to the very end. After reading the sequel's two chapter tease, I gotta go it!
ReplyDeleteZia
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