That same day Hayeong, her husband’s eleven-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, shows up at their door after her grandparents, with whom she lived after her mother passed away, die in a sudden fire. Seonkyeong wants her to feel at home, but is gradually unnerved as the young girl says very little and acts strangely.
At work and at home, Seonkyeong starts to unravel the pasts of the two new arrivals in her life and begins to see startling similarities. Hayeong looks at her the same way Yi Byeongdo does when he recounts the abuse he experienced as a child; Hayeong’s serene expression masks a temper that she can’t control. Plus, the story she tells about her grandparents’ death, and her mother’s before that, deeply troubles Seonkyeong. So much so that Yi Byeongdo picks up on it and starts giving her advice. (Pub Date: Feb 11, 2020)
I'd give it 2.5, but rounding up.
Seonkyeong is suddenly chosen by a serial thriller to meet with a serial killer in prison. Concomitantly, her husband takes his eleven-year-old daughter to live with them and the girl has just lived through a trauma, but there's much more to it.
I'm familiar with the Japanese and the Korean ways to treat stories. Of course, they're not all like this but I mean that I expected The Only Child to be more psychological, more about character analysis than about a story. Still, once you reach the middle of the book and realize you're not going much farther from when you started, it still was disappointing.
There are two things happening, the serial killer, who took weird, out-of-nowhere interest in the main character, and the daughter of her husband, who is also very far from normal. I guess the point was to make parallels between those two, but even after finishing I wasn't very sure of the necessity to have the two characters. We start with The Good Son meets Silent of the Lambs and we end with two stories with little relation or impact on each other.
It wasn't a bad read once you discount that I didn't understand the point of the story. Maybe if you approach it as something close to a horror book, because Seonkyeong's situation is undeniably scary, you'll enjoy it more than I did, waiting for big reveals that didn't come in a satisfactory amount.
I liked the main character. I actually liked the four of them, the serial killer, the girl, the husband... At the same time, I did wonder how oblivious people can be at times, and that may frustrate some readers.
As for the conclusion, we do get a bit of a plot twist, but it wasn't consequential enough to save the story enough. Fortunately, the ending was okay. Again, very horror-movie like, but I felt satisfied with it.
For anyone wondering about the fact that the book is Korean, the translation seemed good enough and you won't even remember this isn't American if not for the names of the characters. There's also the bad side that, as a friend who read this also commented, this story could have taken place anywhere. You don't really feel you've changed airs, as you usually do when you take something written by a foreigner.
I recommend it to people who enjoy psychological thrillers that are really more psychological than thrilling.
Honest review based on an ARC provided by Edelweiss. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.
Rating: 3 out of 5.
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