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.
I try never using the word “hype” to talk about books because I think it’s a little obnoxious.
That said, certainly there are plenty of books whose reputation precedes them, and Monika Kim’s THE EYES ARE THE BEST PART is one of them! I had seen this book on so many Best Books of the Year posts since it was released in 2024, so I was super excited to finally get to it!
And yeah, wow. This book is just fucking incredible. I’m not even sure what I was expecting going into this one, but I loved it so much. Maybe I was a little naive about it? Like, oh, I don’t know. Maybe the whole eyeball eating thing would be more…dreamy & metaphorical?
Hahaha, no. Nope. Big no.
There’s a fair bit of eyeball eating here, and it is super gnarly! But beyond this book’s unavoidable tendency to make you consider what a human eyeball might actually taste like, this is a powerfully written, feral scream of a horror novel.
Our main character is Ji-won, a young Korean American woman in her freshman year of college. She lives in a tiny Los Angeles apartment with her parents and her younger sister, Ji-hyun. The story kicks off with Ji-won’s father leaving her mother for another woman, and completely upending their family.
They’re all devastated, Ji-won’s mom in particular. Their lives seem to slowly crumble around them as Umma grows increasingly despondent.
Until she meets George, her new white boyfriend who is just…an atrocious human being. He very plainly fetishizes Asian women, and is clearly using Umma for a place to stay & home-cooked meals. George is like a fucking cartoon, one of the most detestable characters I’ve met in a while.
He’s also not shy about leering at Ji-won and Ji-hyun with his piercing blue eyes. And then well, something strange begins to happen to Ji-won. She becomes obsessed with the idea of eating George’s eyeballs. Like an intrusive thought, almost. Something she is not in control of.
Ji-won’s life begins to spiral out of control. Her grades slip dramatically, she struggles to make & maintain friendships, things feel terrible at home.
And through all of it, this incessant, insistent voice telling her to do…something so unspeakable.
THE EYES ARE THE BEST PART stares directly into the heart of both anti-Asian racism & misogyny. Monika Kim holds nothing back & really invites the reader to seethe right along with Ji-won, and to not-so-casually cheer her on as her behavior gets more & more unhinged. Put this one firmly in the “Good For Her” category as far as I’m concerned!
The pacing of this one is lightning quick, with chapters typically only a few pages long. I breezed through this, even as I began to grow deeply unsettled by it. It’s also really funny in its own demented way!
I’m not sure what else I can say about this one, I’ve been struggling with this review (and reviews in general). But this is definitely a favorite of the year for me. This book is wildly entertaining, super gross, and also really important. I think Monika Kim is a phenomenal writer…glad to have finally made time for this & really looking forward to her follow-up novel, MOLKA, which comes out in just a couple weeks!
Grimdark Dad 