oh jiwon…. i had such high hopes for you. were my expectations unrealistic? yeah probably. did i wish i loved this more? yeah.

did i still have a decent time? yeah!

this book is tagged as adult but reads sooooo much like a YA. which that’s fine! but then tag it that way so my expectations are changed. i was expecting something a bit more insane like maeve fly & instead i got she is a haunting. iykyk

the biggest issue of this book is the first half of this book. it wasn’t great. the first half almost acts like a set-up for all the plot in the second half, but instead it feels repetitive and lacking depth. like ok i get we need some time to give a shit about the characters, but when spending the first half developing characters and they still feel boring…. it’s not good. i only really enjoyed jiwon in the second half of the book. almost everyone else felt like a trope or very formulaic, and had one discernible trait. and the minute almost every character was introduced i could predict where the plot was going to take them. 

this book also made several missteps in my opinion.

first, giving jiwon a brain tumour was stupid. it felt like a hail mary. sure it made sense seeing as she was hallucinating, but it felt like it was almost completely random with no foreshadowing and rhyme or reason to it other than to get jiwon to still be in the hospital & get off scott free from george’s attempted murder. also, her relationship with alexis not going anywhere annoyed me. like seriously what was the point of having a subplot about their will-they-won’t they? the story doesn’t end in a way that has any pay off for this plot point, and instead it felt like it was wasted time that could’ve gone to fleshing out the horror elements earlier, or to explore more of jiwon’s family.

i will say though, i really liked the horror elements (once the book actually got to them). the descriptions of the eyes was sublime to read, and god at some points i almost felt a tad nauseous. i really think that point was well done.

i had such high hopes for this. i was really looking forward to this, and this was easily one of my most looked forward to reads of 2025. instead, i got served a big slice of disappointment pie :(