Thank you to the publisher for the ARC of this book.

This is a story about a young woman who has lost control of her life and eventually loses control over herself.
Jiwon is a college student who's father has had an affair and left them, sending the household, made up of herself, her mother, and younger sister, into turmoil.
When her mother introduces them to her new boyfriend Jiwon is disgusted by him and his fetish for Asian women, but can't stop thinking about his blue eyes. She starts dreaming of rooms filled with blue eyes and begins to develop an insatiable hunger for them, kicking off her descent into serial murder.
Eventually Jiwon, and the reader, start to struggle to differentiate between what's real and what isn't as she descends into madness and struggles to hold her family together.
There's some good commentary on asian fetishism and performative femanism within these pages, and I found the lighter moments between Jiwon and the one friend she's made at college to be really nice.
I really enjoyed the slower more descriptive style of the first two thirds or so and felt that the conclusion read a little fast and a little convenient, but as a whole I really enjoyed this book and it's an excellent debut.

I loved the atmosphere and the set up. I like Ji-Won’s character development/spiral and at times I really felt her and her mum and her sister in me. I loved the psychological horror aspect of the story - by which I mean Ji-Won’s misery and torment leading up to the eyeballs, and her predeliction for tomatoes and eggs and her other spherical crutches. (It was less eerie than I expected and more trauma.)

Annoyingly I didn’t love it, which was a huge shame, because I really wanted to love it. I think the length plays a part: either too little time devoted to the development of the plot towards the end or too much time at the beginning setting it all up. It feels unevenly measured. Some resolution points feel a little bit cheap. The hospital scene towards the end feels very expensive, for there to be no commentary from a not-wealthy American family. I’m not American, but I’m East Asian, and I find it difficult to believe the characters (those specific characters with those specific financial circumstances) wouldn’t have a single reaction to being in a hospital, the potential bill or have any notion of blame. I’m not asking for a caricature, but subtle hints and unspoken flinching could really slow the rush of the plot at this point of the story. Hands lose their heft when evenly distributed.

Whilst I found her relationship with her mother quite believable, her relationship with her sister, Ji-Hyun, starts off with an incredible dynamic, but loses its roundedness along the way. If the angry, dismissive exchanges with Ji-Hyun is charged with tension, the actual conversation with her feels a little bit stilted. Maybe that’s the point, but I wanted there to be more than a devoted sister taking her elder sister’s shit.

This is a bit persnickety but I found this jarring - I’m not particularly convinced by cherry tomatoes as a stand in for eyes. I get that it’s an emotional crutch, as Ji-Won starts to crave eyes, but whilst I think it’s a great visual symbol, it doesn’t read particularly gorily.

The other thing that throws me out of the narrative is the plausibility. Isn’t LA one of the most surveilled cities? I find it difficult to believe how the plot plays out without more characters seeing through the resolution. I think more time should have been spent on this? I don’t know.

Overall, I liked the book but I felt that it wasn’t as developed as it could have been and therefore did not love it the way I thought I would. Lots of mixed feelings, and ultimately I enjoyed it, but think it could have gone a lot further.

The premise of this book sounded incredibly interesting and I dove into this book with lots of anticipation. Unfortunately, I thought the 'action' started way too far into the book and ended way too soon for my liking. Of course, you need to establish your character(s) and give them some background, but the first half of the story dragged on a bit because of that imo. Will still recommend this book for people who want to read a good horror, but it wasn't my favourite unfortunately.

Add another incredible character to the Unhinged Women Literary Universe!

Ji-won is a first-year college student living at home with her parents and younger sister. When her father suddenly leaves the family, they are all set on a path none of them expected. Ji-won's mother meets George, a disgusting white man with an insidious Asian fetish and Ji-won does everything she can to hold what remains of her family together. Unfortunately the hardest person to keep in check is herself.
Add another incredible character to the Unhinged Women Literary Universe!

Ji-won is a first-year college student living at home with her parents and younger sister. When her father suddenly leaves the family, they are all set on a path none of them expected. Ji-won's mother meets George, a disgusting white man with an insidious Asian fetish and Ji-won does everything she can to hold what remains of her family together. Unfortunately the hardest person to keep in check is herself.

I loved every second of this book. The path to destruction Ji-won walks feels at once sudden and gradual. Her obsession with blue eyeballs rockets her into actions she would never have thought possible, but somehow I was rooting for her the entire way.

I support women's wrongs, especially Ji-won's wrongs!

Thanks to NetGalley and Kengsington Books for providing an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.
I loved every second of this book. The path to destruction Ji-won walks feels at once sudden and gradual. Her obsession with blue eyeballs rockets her into actions she would never have thought possible, but somehow I was rooting for her the entire way.

I support women's wrongs, especially Ji-won's wrongs!

Thanks to Netgalley and Kensington books for the arc of The eyes are the best part!

Could this potentially be my favourite book of 2024 so far? I was expecting a slightly gory, entertaining story about a young girl becoming more and more unhinged, but this had so much more depth and layers than I was expecting.

This book is about Ji-Won, who's father has abruptly abandoned her, her mother and her sister. As her mom finds a new boyfriend (who seems a little too into Asian women) called George, who starts taking up more and more space in their lives, Ji-Won finds her sanity sliding. She's having visions of knives and rooms filled with eyeballs. She's fantasising about eating them. It's gross, it's unhinged, it's riveting.

I'm obsessed with everything about this story, from the way the characters are portrayed to the themes it deals with. Ji-Won, as a young korean American woman, struggles with micro-agressions and stereotypes and sexism and fetishization and plain old racism, and all of those things form such a clear path into her undoing that it's hard to remind yourself you maybe shouldn't really be rooting for her all the way through. Ji-Won's descent into madness is so well done, and the final sentence of the book gave me literal chills. The conclusion was satisfying in a 'holy shit' kinda way. I just love love loved it.

This book was unlike anything I have read before. I thought it was going to be a body horror story, heavy on the gross or moments, and it definitely was, but it was also so much more.

The complexity and depth of this book surprised me and even now days after finishing it, I can't stop thinking about it.

The Eyes Are the Best Part is a great book. I am definitely a fan of the author now. The main character is unhinged and it makes you root for them even more. They get sick and tired of the b.s. in the world and just let loose. They do what everyone only dreams about. It's an intriguing story with characters that have different traits. I look forward to reading future books by the author.

I have a tendency to enjoy stories with unhinged female characters...and this one delivered.
There's an interesting mixture of commentary on gender and race interwoven into this that I really enjoyed. The building and simmering rage that the character has feels genuine. The main character was a complex character - I appreciated the layers given to her.
Note quite as much happened as I perhaps hoped, but it was an intriguing read. I found myself wondering how the story would be wrapped up as I got closer to the end and the pages left were growing smaller. The author pulled off a solid conclusion though. Overall? I enjoyed this one.

I absolutely LOVED this book! The book follows Ji-won as her life falls into disarray. Her father leaves the family to go and be with his mistress. Ji-won, her mother, and her sister are left to fend for themselves. Being the oldest, Ji-won feels responsible for the future of her family. The pressure begins to get to her, messing with her grades during her freshman year of college.

Her mother meets a man named George and begins dating him. George is awful except for one thing…he has beautiful blue eyes. Ever since Ji-won ate a fish eye at dinner one night, she’s become obsessed with eyeballs. Including human ones 👀

I really enjoyed this book! It’s a fun take on the becoming of female serial killer. We see shy Ji-won evolve into a killer.

I loved seeing the family relationship and how much they truly cared for each other. Yes this is a novel about a female serial killer obsessed with eyeballs, but it’s also so much more than that.

I gave this one ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. Once I started I did not want to put it down!

I am a lover of weird fiction so I was very intrigued by this and I've gotta say, it lives up! Unhinged main character goes on an absolute rage bender and it was so fun to watch unravel. Not for everyone, but those that know, KNOW!

I am HERE for the female rage, the rage against the patriarchal systems, rage against Caucasian favoritism, and rage against Asian fetishes'. This body horror was such a masterpiece and gave everything that I could possibly need in a book. I'm honestly so shocked this is a debut novel, because this was incredible. I cannot wait to see what she writes next!

This is one of my most anticipated books of the year and I was lucky enough to be granted an e-arc through Netgalley.

This book is... a Lot™! Kim manages to deal with many a heavy subject - racism, cultural fetishism, feminism and misogyny, rape culture, Asian identity... I could go on! It's not dealt with what I would necessarily call 'deftly' but that was okay. I really liked the story for what it was and it offered a lot of gore, a lot of horror, as well as some difficult topics to ponder.

I felt the writing could be a bit awkward at times, and I felt in general the target audience is probably not me (30+ yr old white boy)... maybe a combination of the young protagonist, coming of age vibes, and the dialogue I felt was somewhat stilted. But all this being said, I flew through this (thank you short chapters, we are forever grateful) and would highly recommend!

An unraveling young woman.
Toxic men.
A grotesque obsession: eating eyes.
Vengeance.

I don't even know where to start with this.
I enjoyed it, as much as one can "enjoy" this. I read it over two days-- I needed to know where it was going and questioned if I should be rooting for Ji-won as much as I was (smash the patriarchy!)

This was an interesting character study-- a young woman making sense of her life and the less than perfect men in her life-- abandoned by her father, her mother's new, white, Asian-fetishizing boyfriend, and a racist classmate with romantic interests. As her grades slip and her family, and these men weigh on her mind, Ji-won begins to slide into madness, a morbid curiosity taking hold: removing and eating men's blue eyes.

It wild, it's well-paced.
It speaks to the Korean-American experience, family, relationships and is full of 🫣🤢😬 moments. The violence may be a bit much for the non-horror lovers, so if chomping on eyes in graphic details is too much for you (or the cover didn't already deter you), steer clear?

(I'd love to see this as a film, too!
The novel moves like an Asian horror film, slow build tension to an explosion of violence in the end.)

The Eyes Are the Best Part by Monika Kim offers a chilling initiation into the world of horror fiction. With its accessible prose and vivid descriptions of gore, the book sets a compellingly eerie mood from the start. Though I found the book to be bit disappointing, it is ideal for readers dipping their toes into the genre.

One of the glaring issues with the novel lies in its shallow writing. While i mentioned the prose is easy to comprehend, it was also superficial, with unnuanced characters. There was little to no character development, which resulted in me struggling to empathize with the characters and understand their actions. Instead of evoking a sense of unease, the narrative unfolds in a predictable manner, lacking the chilling twists and turns that keep one on the edge of their seats.

Additionally, the novel delves into a tapestry of themes ranging from fetishization and misogyny to loss and grief, which is commendable for a debut novel. However, it treads on familiar ground (the dialogue resembles a poorly executed Netflix show) without offering nuanced commentary. I believe readers who are well-versed in such matters may find the portrayal of these issues to be somewhat simplistic.

While “The Eyes Are The Best Part” wasn’t my cup of tea, i can see how others might enjoy its portrayal of a young female serial killer intriguing.

Thank you to NetGalley and Erewhon Books for the ARC

Feast your eyes on this…a young woman with an insatiable hunger for human eyeballs. Truly revolting and captivating in equal measure.

Not for the squeamish nor the faint of heart, The Eyes are the Best Part draws us into Ji-Won’s downward spiral from a floundering student with family troubles to a full-on psychotic murderous madwoman by journey’s end. It’s very satisfying, and I found myself rooting for Ji-Won even as her psyche unravels. The more she indulges in her worst impulses, the stronger her will becomes.

The abrupt ending left me wanting more, though. There was more meat on the bone here to explore, and it felt like things were tidied up too quickly and without enough fanfare. Perhaps a sequel is in the offing?

I love an unhinged female mc, and Monika Kim absolutely gave us that in Ji-won as she mentally spirals in The Eyes Are The Best Part. After her father walks out on her family, Ji-won’s mother starts dating George, a white, blue eyed man with a fetish for Asian women. Ji-won becomes obsessed with George’s blue eyes and often wonders what they would taste like.
I really enjoyed this book and the character of Ji-won, she is the perfect unreliable main character, and as the book is written for her 1st person POV, the reader doesn’t really know what is real and what is Ji-won’s madness.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of The Eyes Are The Best Part in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the digital arc.

This book was great, I think it hits the mark really well on the American-Korean experience. For a debut, Monika Kim delivers extraordinarily, it’s a very well written story.

I did find the first 50% of the novel to be quite slow, but the last half really delivers with violence, gore and cannibalism.

Cant wait to see what Kim writes next!

This is a weird book for weird girls for sure. This touches on life as a child of immigrant parents, the struggles as a woman in society that is prone to being fetishized by men, and the pressure to reach parental expectations when their hopes rest on you just to name a few things. This is super dark, very gory, and honestly a gripping read. I devoured this one within a few hours. Lots of trigger warnings on this read but really good if you're not too squeamish and love a feminine rage story.

As someone that reads a lot from the horror/thriller genre, I found the synopsis of this book so intriguing. It’s not often that I see a book written from the view of a female serial killer who solely likes killing.

While this book has great commentary, I found that the beginning of this book was quite slow. It does set the stage for why things happen later on, however it wasn’t until about 60% into the book that we finally saw Jin-won’s mental spiraling turn to horror. The book is just under 300 pages but I think it could have easily been a great novella. I also found the ending to be lack luster. For as much detail as Monika Kim put into the first half of the book, I wish the ending wasn’t so rushed. For those reasons I’ve rated this book 3 stars.

We follow Ji-won at a very difficult time in her life. Her father left her, her sister, and her mom, and her mom quickly fell prey to an opportunistic, lying, manipulative, gross white man. She has no friends, her grades are falling, and she starts having weird dreams, slowly becoming obsessed with the idea of consuming eyeballs.

This was gross, enraging, unhinged, quick to read, and full of great commentary about racism, racial fetishization, abandonment, and generational trauma. I feel like the ending was maybe a tad bit convenient, but overall, it's an unsettling read that makes you think.