Book Tour: Review: The Girl from Well
Title : The Girl from the Well
Author : Rin Chupeco
Rating : 3.5 Stars!!!
ebook, 304 pages
Expected publication: August 5th 2014 by Sourcebooks Fire
Source copy : NetGalley
Synopsis :
A dead girl walks the streets.
She hunts murderers. Child killers, much like the man who threw her body down a well three hundred years ago.
And when a strange boy bearing stranger tattoos moves into the neighborhood so, she discovers, does something else. And soon both will be drawn into the world of eerie doll rituals and dark Shinto exorcisms that will take them from American suburbia to the remote valleys and shrines of Aomori, Japan.
Because the boy has a terrifying secret - one that would just kill to get out.
The Girl from the Well is A YA Horror novel pitched as "Dexter" meets "The Grudge", based on a well-loved Japanese ghost story
Source : Goodreads
We are the fates that people fear to become. We are what happens to good persons, and to bad persons, and to everyone in between.
I am pretty sure that all of you read and watched Horror Stories/Movies, that is why people on Goodreads are marking this book as their "to-read". This one already marks as one of the Horror/Mystery book that I read so far. I was reading YA/Fiction and Contemporary lately these days so when I was reading The Girl From the Well, it is kind of a big shift on my mind to be honest.
The starting point of the book is a total mystery to me. It was like the voice of the narrator whispering on you saying, "I am already dead and I haunt people". I used to read Short Horror Stories when I was kid so I was expecting that the book will have the same impact on the previous stories that I read. But The Girl from the Well has its own element of suspense. One moment I was just reading word by word and then strange and creepy things will happen to certain murderers. The way Okiku appears to the murderers is genuinely heart-stopping. (Disclaimer : My heart did not stop beating literally)
One thing that is noticeable on the story is the endless counting of Okiku in everything she sees and they she will suddenly stop in number nine. At some point, it sometimes misleads me in the story. I can't help myself to think what's the relevance of it in the book. But when I reached in the middle of the book, everything about Okiku's origin and her tragical death makes all sense. The retelling of the old ghost folk tale is so unique.
Reaching the page about Tarquin's mother and the heritage of his mother, everything felt like a whirlpool in my intellect. The center feels so dark, hollow and silent. The thought of the Japanese ghosts and its ways to dominate the soul of an innocent is very haunting. I am amazed the way Rin Chupeco played with that concept with Tarquin and Okiku to be reliable. It was simply an astounding combination of a living and the dead in its dark manner.
Being capable to read the thoughts of a ghost, is kind of gliding myself into another windspeed. There were some parts that I feel like I am sticking out over her victims, seeing as they scream for life because of a sudden appearance of death. I liked how the author created it so real, the killings and the hauntings to be exact.
Actually, the scariest part is in the end for me. I am merely not that comfortable to have another soul within another human. Its like 1:2, one body:two soul. From this point i can undeniably say that The Girl from the Well is one of the horror/mystery book i didnt expect to break me all the creeps. But wait until you reach the ceremony of the exorcism, you'll see the most scariest words so far.
Friendly advice: Please read this with lights on. Simple as that.
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