The Girl from the Well
by Rin Chupeco (Goodreads Author)
3.74 of 5 stars
You may think me biased, being murdered myself. But my state of being has nothing to do with the curiosity toward my own species, if we can be called such. We do not go gentle, as your poet encourages, into that good night.
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.
My Thoughts
Right from the beginning this book set the mood. The protagonist is a ghost who avenges the murders of children to set their souls at rest. She attacks a disgusting middle-aged loner reminiscent of Mr. Harvey from The Lovely Bones and kills him in a graphic and gruesome way. It’s an excellent illustration of what she’s been doing for the past three hundred years.
Our heroine Okiku is inspired by the Japanese ghost tale Banchō Sarayashiki, in which a servant girl is tortured and thrown into a well by her master. Unavenged, she climbs out of the well even after her death and wails every night. Okiku climbed out of the well, but she expanded from wailing activities to vigilante. Wandering the earth, she sees murdered children strapped to their murderer’s back, unable to break free. By killing these unpunished killers, she releases these trapped souls into the after-world. She’s a Charon (ferryman, Hades, Styx) of some sorts, albeit more active and way more kick-ass. Since she herself cannot ever be avenged, she remains on this earth unconcerned about the living, save for those who kill little kids. Until one day, she sees a strange tattooed boy who catches her interest. After that, she takes it upon her to save and help him in all the ways she can. Okiku is very easy to sympathize with. For one she defies the stereotype of angry ghosts: they tend to remain in one place and haunt whoever wronged them. Okiku’s anger has long been transformed into hatred for child killers instead of her original tormentor, making her a quite righteous entity that doesn’t stoop to scaring normal people.
Tark is the tattooed boy Okiku finds interesting. At fifteen, he’s too young for tattoos, and he has a strange woman in black standing behind him. Okiku begins to follow Tark because a serial child killer is plotting to kidnap him. After revealing herself to Tark and his cousin Callie during an especially grisly reckoning of the serial killer, Okiku begins to understand more of Tark’s tattoos and the woman in black. As it is, Tark’s mother is institutionalized at a mental hospital after trying to throttle him to death. Because he also can see what his mother sees (the woman in black with a crumbling white mask), Tark worries he’s also going mad. Later Tark, Callie, and Okiku find out the woman in black is an evil spirit her mother sealed inside him when she’s still a member of some exorcising sisterhood in Japan to prevent it from wreaking havoc on everything. Tark is cheerful, sarcastic, despite every unsettling, disgusting thing that’s happened around him. He tries to stay positive in bad situations, like a horrid human relic struggling inside him to break free.
The pacing of this book is quite fast, not flagging for one moment. It has a respectable amount of tension, plot twists, and suspense. Ultimately, the climax is very clear, satisfying and not disappointing at all, unlike so many other YA books. Rin Chupeco isn’t afraid of killing off characters, and that’s something I really like in an author. I especially hate those books and TV shows in which the characters CAN’T DIE no matter what (I’m looking at you, Vampire’s Diaries).
The ending is not what I anticipated, with Okiku living inside Tark instead of the woman in black to fill the void she left behind (what). But this bittersweet ending is quite realistic, and from the two’s dynamic, it’s not like Okiku would kill Tark in a fit of rage. So that’s good. The Girl from the Well is a tasteful, successful horror story that has a twisting plot and graphic scenes that are visceral but not overly terrifying. If you're too chicken to watch horror movies, reading this book can give you that thrill with decidedly lowered emotional damage.
Our heroine Okiku is inspired by the Japanese ghost tale Banchō Sarayashiki, in which a servant girl is tortured and thrown into a well by her master. Unavenged, she climbs out of the well even after her death and wails every night. Okiku climbed out of the well, but she expanded from wailing activities to vigilante. Wandering the earth, she sees murdered children strapped to their murderer’s back, unable to break free. By killing these unpunished killers, she releases these trapped souls into the after-world. She’s a Charon (ferryman, Hades, Styx) of some sorts, albeit more active and way more kick-ass. Since she herself cannot ever be avenged, she remains on this earth unconcerned about the living, save for those who kill little kids. Until one day, she sees a strange tattooed boy who catches her interest. After that, she takes it upon her to save and help him in all the ways she can. Okiku is very easy to sympathize with. For one she defies the stereotype of angry ghosts: they tend to remain in one place and haunt whoever wronged them. Okiku’s anger has long been transformed into hatred for child killers instead of her original tormentor, making her a quite righteous entity that doesn’t stoop to scaring normal people.
Tark is the tattooed boy Okiku finds interesting. At fifteen, he’s too young for tattoos, and he has a strange woman in black standing behind him. Okiku begins to follow Tark because a serial child killer is plotting to kidnap him. After revealing herself to Tark and his cousin Callie during an especially grisly reckoning of the serial killer, Okiku begins to understand more of Tark’s tattoos and the woman in black. As it is, Tark’s mother is institutionalized at a mental hospital after trying to throttle him to death. Because he also can see what his mother sees (the woman in black with a crumbling white mask), Tark worries he’s also going mad. Later Tark, Callie, and Okiku find out the woman in black is an evil spirit her mother sealed inside him when she’s still a member of some exorcising sisterhood in Japan to prevent it from wreaking havoc on everything. Tark is cheerful, sarcastic, despite every unsettling, disgusting thing that’s happened around him. He tries to stay positive in bad situations, like a horrid human relic struggling inside him to break free.
The pacing of this book is quite fast, not flagging for one moment. It has a respectable amount of tension, plot twists, and suspense. Ultimately, the climax is very clear, satisfying and not disappointing at all, unlike so many other YA books. Rin Chupeco isn’t afraid of killing off characters, and that’s something I really like in an author. I especially hate those books and TV shows in which the characters CAN’T DIE no matter what (I’m looking at you, Vampire’s Diaries).
The ending is not what I anticipated, with Okiku living inside Tark instead of the woman in black to fill the void she left behind (what). But this bittersweet ending is quite realistic, and from the two’s dynamic, it’s not like Okiku would kill Tark in a fit of rage. So that’s good. The Girl from the Well is a tasteful, successful horror story that has a twisting plot and graphic scenes that are visceral but not overly terrifying. If you're too chicken to watch horror movies, reading this book can give you that thrill with decidedly lowered emotional damage.
