e-Audio, 08:36:25
Narrated by: Elaine Wang
Release Date: November 7, 2023
Published by: Macmillan Audio
Read from: November 4-7, 2023
Stand-alone
Source: Netgalley (I received a copy of this audiobook from Netgalley and the Publisher in exchange for a just and honest review. This did nothing to influence my review.)
TW: Death, Murder, Body Horror, Gore, Blood, Torture, Suicide, Grief, Bullying, Cursing
For Readers Interested In: Horror, K-Pop, Racial/Ethnic Diversity (Korean), Family Diversity (Single Mom who’s hardly there), LGBTQIA+ (Sapphic), Thriller, YAYellowjackets meets She Is a Haunting in this debut speculative thriller that follows a disgraced teen idol who comes face-to-face with the demons of her past in a glittering, cutthroat K-pop competition.
After a shocking scandal that abruptly ended her teen popstar career, eighteen-year-old Sunny Lee spends her days longing for her former life and cyberstalking her ex-BFF and groupmate, Candie. The two were once inseparable, but that was then—before the tragedy and heartache they left in their wake.
In the here and now, Sunny is surprised to discover that Candie is attending a new K-pop workshop in her hometown. Candie might be there chasing stardom, but Sunny can’t resist the chance to join her and finally confront their traumatic history. Because she still can’t figure out what happened that horrible night when Mina, the third in their tight-knit trio, jumped to her death. Or if the dark and otherworldly secrets she and Candie were keeping had something to do with it . . .
But the workshop doesn’t bring the answers Sunny had hoped for, nor a happy reunion with Candie. Instead, Sunny finds herself haunted by ghostly visions while strange injuries start happening to her competitors—followed by even stranger mutilations to their bodies. In her race to survive, Sunny will have to expose just who is behind the carnage—and if Candie is out for blood once more—in Linda Cheng’s spellbinding sapphic thriller that will have readers screaming and swooning for more.
*MY THOUGHTS*
I did not want to write this review. I just didn’t know what I wanted to say. I liked it well enough, but it has a bit of a slow burn. And after that first slow burn horror book I had this year (I Feed Her to the Beast) I was a bit afraid this one would also take so long. This one had a wait, but it wasn’t near as brutal.
This book was about an ex K-Pop group member who is taken aback when she sees that her ex-group member is attending a workshop in town. She makes plans to attend the same workshop hoping to figure out what went wrong in their group those years back. What she finds instead is a ghost who’s haunting her and the many weird mutilations her competitors have, including plucking their faces off……
The plot was done very well in my opinion. Yes it was slow, but once she got to the competition, I remember being on pins and needles worried about when something was going to happen. And I thought it was really unique how this happened in the first place. There is so much focus on image in K-Pop, so I thought it was interesting that the author decided to spin that on it’s head and make it to where the image was also what brought them down.
The scary bits were where I would have beefed this up a bit. There’s body horror and then there’s the grotesque ghost, but I wanted more of the ghost. And if not, I wanted more of the person saying “Do this” and then it happened. Idk, I just wanted more creepy. I know this is a YA body horror book, but I think if they didn’t want to make it more gross, they could have beefed up the horror in those areas instead.
The characters were ok, but I was annoyed by Sunny. Why? She was so concerned about Candie when she did her wrong. (We find out why later on in the book, but by the time it was revealed, I was already annoyed lolol) I guess I just didn’t understand why she kept subjecting herself to that. Candie seemed mean and so did those other competitors. As someone who was gone from the scene for such a while, I definitely would have shot them the deuces and been like byeeeeeeeeeee lol But I guess this is just further proof that I would never be a good main character. Well in the types of books I read anyway lol
I am also not Korean, so i can’t speak on the representation, just on the way K-Pop is portrayed and the beauty standard. As a YA librarian who used to be in the branches, K-Pop was very popular and i had to stay up on trends, but that’s as far as my expertise took me. With that being said, I do think this was a fair representation of the way the author wanted to spin this on it’s head. By writing this book the author took that aspect and made it scary and I’m always for making anything scary lol
This book was good, but I do wish there a little more umph to it if that makes sense. Would that have made it Adult if there was “more”? Idk. But that’s the only thing that I felt was missing from this time. Hopefully there will be more of it in the next one……. I heard this was a series….. I thought it closed well in this one, but with them setting out to do the thing, I’m not surprised there will be more. Just in a state of shock because WHAT THE HELL AM I GOING TO FIND TO DO UNTIL THE NEXT ONE COMES OUT?!
Overall, I give this
