The Suffering (The Girl from the Well #2)

Japanese cultures and legends with a spooky aspect kept me glued to the pages of The Girl From the Well by Rin Chupeco! I bought this book years ago because the synopsis intrigued me, but I hadnt gotten around to reading it until it was set as the October read for the Dragons & Tea Book Club. The first five chapters introduce us to a ghost that sees murderers and scares them to death. This ghosts life was ended in murder and she seeks justice and rids the world of killers. She notices a teen boy with strange tattoos that he tries to keep hidden as he moves into a house in Applegate, with his father. The boy, Tarquin (Tark for short) lives alone with his father since his mother seemingly tried to kill him when he was younger. The two visit her in the psychiatric hospital and she is terrified when she sees Tark and shes threatening harm to whoever she thinks is going to hurt him, and only she can see this being. Tark thinks he freaks her out but his mother sees a dark shadow in him. The ghost sees the shadow too. The suspense heightens immensely in the next few chapters and leaves me rooting for the ghostly woman and her strong intentions. Chapters 6- 10: The action picks up alongside the suspense and I didnt want to stop reading! 11-14: detailed descriptions of Japanese ghost legends surrounding Okiku in the well explain the ghosts story and the humor picks up as Tark and Callie exchange emails. 15: A group of high school boys committed horrible and mutilating acts on a young woman and this setting opens a chapter with a new murder and retribution. 16-20: Tark, his father and cousin Callie travel to the shrine where Tarks mother grew up. They learn about her life and all the things they never knew about her from the people she was raised by and grew up with. They witness a possession and exorcism of a little boy and see the shrines powers at work. 20-ending: sacrifices are made, tragedy strikes and parts of the shrine are damaged and destroyed. I love this book and read through it quickly because it was interesting, suspenseful and I grew to love the characters and wanted to know how everything turned out for them. I enjoyed learning more about Japanese culture and legends, 5 stars!

This is a story of two teenagers that are haunted. One is alive and the other died violently some three hundred years ago in far off Japan. They don\’t know it, but they are to become inextricably linked in a battle of good vs. evil, and they will never be the same. Okiku is a spirit who has wandered the world for over three hundred years. Betrayed and brutally murdered at sixteen, she looks for tell-tale signs of child murderers. The sign? They carry the souls of the murdered children around with them- tethered with bonds that keep the young victims pinned to their killer until Okiku sets them free. The setting free process can be…messy, but certainly not undeserved. Any measure of peace that Okiku finds in this afterlife comes directly from the freeing of children\’s souls. Something she has always been denied herself. Tarquin is a fifteen year old boy haunted by a feeling that there is something very wrong with him. Given strange tattoos when he was just five, he covers them as much as possible and has learned to stay away from other children. His mother is in an institution that keeps her from killing her son. Something she has tried in the past. When Tark moves with his father to a new home he inadvertently catches Okiku\’s eye, and she follows him to his home. It comes as something of a shock when Tark actually is able to see her. This is the beginning of a relationship that will eventually take them back to Japan and into serious danger. I enjoyed this book. The fact that it is based on a real Japanese legend was interesting and I felt that the author did a very good job of integrating the legend with events in this story. Tark is a young man who is older than his years. A childhood spent mostly alone and a mentally unstable mother who has attacked him have left him unwilling to interact with most of the world around him and has made him, understandably, cynical and bitter. Until Okiku. When they end up in a remote area of Japan, the two will come face to face with a force that will change their existence forever.

This book is one of those books that stay with you. It reminds me of a time when people wrote scary stories that were entrenched in history and really had a body to it if you will – pun intended lol. I am a fan of Run Chupeco from The Heart Forger series and wanted to check out her other books. I\’m so glad I did. I do admit, I was kind of leery of the book cover – looked too cliche from The Ring movie but you should never judge a book by its cover right?! Like I said, I am a fan of the author. Her style of writing is almost poetic and she really brings you in. You feel like you\’re almost in the book because of her rich descriptions however she isn\’t over flowery with it – you won\’t be reading Hemingway. I DEVOURED this book and the following. I have always believed a great book stays with you and becomes a part of you as if it\’s a memory you lived and this is true. I find myself wondering how the characters are doing and where they\’re at in their stories. I cried and laughed, got creeped out, angry… while reading. I think Chupeco is quite talented and recommend. I know this is a YA book but I am not a YA and thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I would recommend this to others!

I wasnt too sure going into this book how it was going to turn out as I hadnt heard to much about it but I can safely say that it was worth the read. This book is told from the perspective of Okuki, a revengeful spirit who after her own tragic past has taken it upon herself to set the victims of child murderers free by killing their killer. Out with seeking revenge Okuki stays out of the way of the living until she comes across a boy with a secret of his own and leads her into a battle with a being that may just be stronger than she is. Okuki is by far the best part of this book. She is definitely the most developed character in the book, she is morally grey and has a brilliant story arc. She is also terrifying. I liked the other main characters Tark and his cousin Callie but they sort of faded into the background a bit as Okuki stole the show. This is such an atmospheric book, its creepy and unsettling from the get go. Its a slow burn story that reels you in from the first line and will leave you feeling tense and edgy the whole way through. Unfortunately, I wasnt too keen on the ending it just seemed to fall a little flat for me. I dont know whether this may be because they were setting up for a sequel when I feel it would have made a really good standalone. Overall, this was an enjoyable, spooky read and I gave it 4 out of 5 stars.

I really really enjoyed the start of this book, probably about the first half of it. There was such an atmospheric feel to it and it was honestly very creepy. I liked Okiki and found her characterisations really interesting, the more you get to know about her the more complex she becomes. This book also has an incredibly diverse cast and touches on Japanese culture and customs; I don\’t know how accurate these depictions are so i\’d be interested to know if they were accurate. Sadly for me it slowed down in the second half of the book and this is where my enjoyment slowed. It just seemed to drag on quite a bit and take a good while to get to the conclusion. I know there\’s a sequel out so I would be intrigued to read it but I won\’t be jumping to read it.

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