ARC Book Review | The Girl from the Well by Rin Chupeco

Posted on Thursday, July 3, 2014 4:00 AM
The Girl from the WellFormat: e-ARC
Source: Publisher via Netgalley
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Publication Date: August 5, 2014
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


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:


I am where the dead children go

Yep, that is the first line in this uniquely haunting book. How freaking creepy is that?!? VERY! Am I right?? Of course I am ;)

BUT…even though, that first line gave me the chills with its eeriness, it also really intrigued me. What does that mean?? Where do the dead children go?? I want to know! Well…..kind of. Ok, not so much, but I still had to find out.

The Girl from the Well is based on a very well-known Japanese ghost story, one that I wish I would have researched before I picked this book up as I did get a teeny bit confused at times, but it wasn’t enough to make me put this book down. Okiku is a ‘vengeful’ spirit, one that has been hunting child murderers for a very long time. Her story begins over three hundred years ago when she was thrown down a well to her death, only her spirit never left and she has been wandering around seeking vengeance on those who murder kids, much like the man who killed her.

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.

Like I said above, Okiku has spent her timing unconcerned with those around her, unless of course they have dead children attached to them. However, all of this changes when a tattooed boy crosses her path and Okiku finds herself drawn to him and she doesn’t know why. The plot only grows from there but since I don’t want to give anything away I’ll just say that the tattooed boy is more than meets the ‘human’ eye. Yes, I know that’s kind of vague and you probably won’t understand it until you read the book ;)

Although I enjoyed this story, I wish I would have put it off for a few days only because the day that I finished this book, I came home from class and had NO electricity, which means I had to sleep in the dark! After reading this! Needless to say that I didn’t sleep well that night. I kept waking up and imagining a Japanese dead girl standing beside my bed *shudders*

Overall, The Girl from the Well is a disturbingly unique, haunting book. It will give you chills and you’ll probably never look at a ceiling the same way again. If you like to be scared then you should definitely give this one a try.



--- Christy


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