Book Review: The Girl from the Well - Rin Chupeco

Title: The Girl from the Well
Author: Rin Chupeco
Pub Date: August 5th, 2014
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Page Count: 267

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.

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I wanted to DNF a couple times but I stick with it. The ending was the action and thrill that should've been present throughout. While there was a lot this book could've improved on, I'm left with slight satisfaction. - Nova @ Out of Time

I expected a horror vibe from this story. "I am where the dead children go." Obviously, that's contemporary, right? Anyway, the writing style kind of felt like a fairytale, which was odd. There was a lot of repetition where something would be stated and restated like "she had blond hair. Yes, her hair was blonde and her face beautiful like the moon." I just made that example up, but you get what I mean.
However, there were aspects of the writing that I adored. The writing for description was more than basic similes. There was depth to them, chill and even though I felt like they were overdone in some places, I could see that the author really wanted to make the horror feel as genuine as possible.

What really bothered me was how simple and boring this plot was. It's about a ghost girl who wants to exorcise the demon from a boy. That's it. There could've been so much more in this story. Instead, the girl kind of gave off a creepy [like, stalker] vibe because she's narrating but no one can see her [with some exceptions, but spoilers!]
Most of it wasn't main idea related and while I found it intriguing, it was almost like the same event happened [with the whole creepy descriptions that got old after a while.]

But I do LOVE the culture! I don't think I see Japanese culture [or any culture that isn't American] in YA and I love that it's changed. The whole Japanese legend and how things went to Japan was wonderful! I think it was portrayed very well, even though I don't know much about Japanese culture.

But maybe around seventy-five percent in, things started to get interesting. I'm really glad I didn't DNF because in that last quarter, the story managed to make a pretty good turnaround. Things finally started connecting, there was action and I really loved the way things ended. It almost felt nostalgic.

Including characters that felt real but not over the top, Girl From The Well incorporated elements of storytelling that I enjoyed but felt incomplete due to what felt like a boring plotline.

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Despite an unsettling resemblance to Japanese revenants, Rin always maintains her sense of hummus. Born and raised in Manila, Philippines, she keeps four pets: a dog, two birds, and a husband. Dances like the neighbors are watching.

Her work, The Girl from the Well, is a YA psychological horror novel due out in Fall 2014, pitched as "Dexter" meets "The Grudge". She is represented by Nicole LaBombard and Rebecca Podos of the Helen Rees Agency.