Women with dreams of vengeance? We love to see it. Go after those eyes, Ji-won! Take control away from men!

The Eyes Are the Best Part is an unsettling journey about a young woman who becomes a serial killer once her disgust and frustration boil over into free-flowing rage at the racist & sexist men who surround her.

 Ji-won is constantly standing on unsteady ground. She loves her mom, but her dad abandoned their family after an affair and her mother simply crumples. Her little sister is scared and hurt, just wanting things to be okay. 

When a new man enters their apartment, Ji-won’s distaste grows and grows. George is sexist, racist, condescending, and generally obnoxious, but what Ji-won can’t stop fixating on is his bright blue eyes. And what it would be like to eat them.

Her dreams get darker and more compelling, and even as her grades suffer and her friends become wary, Ji-won’s hunger cannot be stopped.

It’s a disgusting and fascinating little tale about removing yourself from the boundaries of fate and choosing your path forward, no matter what ending the world has in store for you. Ji-won ponders whether her future is really set in stone, but she leans into violence to escape the expectations of society (and specifically of men). I’ll always gobble up an unhinged woman saying, “You know what? Fuck it. Let’s just destroy the world.”

Is Ji-won always sympathetic or likeable? Absolutely not. But I think part of the charm is seeing how much you feed into her mindset before she shifts into horror and violence.

The chapters are short and segmented, with lots of little dream sequences and famished visions. They’re sometimes abrasive and feel like rough blinks, especially as you start to wonder just how well you can trust Ji-won.

Ji-won’s family struggles were deep & heart-wrenching. They each deal with micro and macro aggressions and fetishization towards Asian women, and dreams versus realities of living in America, and just how much of their lives are out of their control. The web of relationships between mother and father and daughters were well-developed. And Ji-won’s place as the elder daughter who sometimes serves as translator, sometimes serves as protector, and often just has too much stacked on her shoulders is so relatable.

Were the murders believable and without plot holes? Eh, not really, but who cares? The male antagonists did feel a little bit flat & cliche at times (cardboard cutout villains) - which bored me a tad just because I think it would have been more intriguing to disguise their nastiness at the start - but overall this has a very fresh spin on eye horror and cannibalism.

For a “good for her” reading moment mixed in with navigating the beginning of adulthood while shouldering family trauma, be sure to pick this one up.

CW: cannibalism, body horror, murder, death, gore, racism & slurs, violence, blood, misogyny, stalking, abandonment, toxic friendship, sexual harassment, mental illness, cultural appropriation, infidelity, grief, pedophilia, panic attacks, gaslighting, torture, classism, excrement, vomit, cancer

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