The Girl from the Well (Girl from the Well, #1)

by Rin Chupeco

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.

• ISBN10: 1402292201
• ISBN13: 9781402292200
• Publish Date: 5 August 2014 (first published 1 January 2014)
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Sourcebooks Fire
• Format: eBook
• Pages: 276
• Language: English

Reviews

[Angie]

Proceed With Caution:

This book contains scary images, death, abuse, murder, pedophilia, and blood and gore.

The Basics:

The Girl From the Well follows three-hundred-year old ghost, Okiku, who was drowned at age sixteen. Now she roams the earth and takes revenge on those who prey on kids and teens. She's not all rage and horror though, as she protects fifteen-year-old Tarquin from a truly evil presence that has attached itself to him.

My Thoughts:

The Girl From the Well was well outside my comfort zone, as I do not typically read Horror. However, I wanted to try something new, and sadly it just didn't work out. I liked the idea of Okiku killing murders and child molesters, but her sudden attachment to Callie and Tarquin was kind of weird. I also felt like I didn't get to know them at all, mostly because of the narration.

The narration of The Girl From the Well felt really off. It's hard to tell if this is completely from Okiku's perspective or if it alternates. Okiku is telling the story in first person, but as she's an outside observer rather than an active participant most of the time it reads more like third person. But there are times we're in Callie's head, so did it switch to third person from Calli's POV or is Okiku omniscient? It got confusing and took me out of the story.

It was also weird how Tarquin and Callie just conveniently had life changes that put them in Japan exactly when they needed to be. Tarquin's mom gives some ominous last words directing them to her home village to break the curse. But instead of having to find a way to get there, Tarquin's dad just happens to need to transfer to Tokyo and Callie just signs up for a last minute school trip. Right.

Overall, I wouldn't consider The Girl From the Well scary. There are definitely some scary scenes that had my heart racing, but they were few and far between. Thankfully. I am a baby. If this were a movie, I would have been crying under a blanket. But as a whole, this was pretty tame since Okiku really isn't bad. And the bad ghost is hardly present. There's also a distance due to the narration which keeps us apart from the action.

In the end, The Girl From the Well was okay. It definitely had some great eerie scenes, but the characters and plot didn't pull me in at all. The narration was the biggest hurdle though.

[cornerfolds]

Read more of my reviews at Cornerfolds.com!

Actual rating: 3.5 stars

Review to come!

[Veronica 🦦]

B+/B | Japanese ghosts and folklore? Fatal Frame-esque atmosphere? I'M SOLD SIGN ME UP.

I adored the Fatal Frame games. I never had the chance to actually play the main games myself (I did play the spin-off Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir for the 3DS which was eh but oh well), but I did watch a ton of YouTubers play it. I always have looked for other media - but especially books - that capture that very same feel and atmosphere: Japanese ghosts and rituals gone wrong.


Rin Chupeco sort of did that with this book. She was able to sort of capture the atmosphere of the Fatal Frame games, except without the soul or the weight or the scares of the games.


But this book isn’t a Fatal Frame book. It’s a Rin Chupeco book and it has its own soul, weight, and flavor. Despite the fact that it didn’t bring the same level of scares, Rin’s writing and characterizations counterbalanced the lack of scares.


I admit that I had some whiplash when the POVs kept changing and from the third person to first person. Still, Okiku’s voice and Tark’s voices and emotions were wildly different from each others’ which I really appreciated. Rin’s writing certainly has a way of gripping you and refusing to let you go, even after the book is finished (thus at least forcing me to start the next book as soon as I finished this one). She was able to write two very compelling characters, both of whom I can identify with in a way. She did a lot of showing which helped me feel all the emotions the characters were feeling.


Now, this book has a cool premise -- a vengeful ghost, who goes after monstrous humans (who honestly deserve to get murdered by a ghost), meeting up and befriending this kid who happens to have an even worse spirit attached to him. I thought it was well-executed, although I do wish it was scarier.


In terms of the world-building, it has the atmosphere that I was looking for in books. Rin does a good job of setting up this world. Is it something to throw a party over? No, but I certainly commend her for doing a good job bringing this world alive.


In general, I thought that the characters were well-written and their development was well done. The Okiku of chapter 1 isn’t the same as the one at the end of the book and the same with Tark. I love that. I love being able to witness/being shown characters developing and changing as the story goes on. I love that Okiku seemed to become more "human" the longer she was around Tark.


But, while this book shines, it's also just missing something to achieve magnificence.


It’s not scary. Yeah, sure there are the attempts to have the scares, but it’s like my baby cousin trying to scare me when she should be napping instead. You can get me once or twice if I’m not expecting it, but other than that it’s meh. I wanted to be terrified.

Okiku is interesting and so Tark. As I said, I adore the premise of this spirit lingering for years and murdering despicable human beings. I love it, okay?


However, I honestly wished that there was MORE. I needed more meat. I would have rather had a 300+ page book that had MORE than a book that sometimes felt like I was reading summaries. It needed more. Maybe I'm just greedy, but I needed more. Give me more scares, please!

Do I recommend? Honestly, yes. I think you should give this book a shot.

[inlibrisveritas]

The Girl from the Well is a novel centered around the lore of Okiku, a popular ghost story in Japan, and would great for people who love horror movies but want a little extra to the story.

I love books that expound on the idea of the classic villain/monster, so instead of simply being told to fear this being you get a glimpse of what makes them tick. There a little slice of humanity in there that makes you feel for them, even despite the fact that crawling on ceilings still makes your skin crawl. That’s precisely what The Girl in the Well does. The opening chapter shows the best of both worlds. We get to see Okiku as that horror movie monster, and we also get to see the vital service she provides for spirits chained to their murderers. She tells us the story, but rarely ever speaks a loud and so we are given a sort of inside narrative of the events as she watches and acts. I didn’t know I needed a book from the view point of a vengeful spirit but I now know I need more of them.

Okiku is a character that has embodied her circumstance entirely, and so we get little flashes of the girl she might have been but we do see through her relationship with Tarquin that she’s managed to hold on to little bits and pieces. Tarquin’s story was one that I thoroughly enjoyed. I won’t say it’s something I haven’t encountered before, but the imagery and wonderful wording used by Chupeco really makes it stand out and even it’s in super tense and scary moments it’s sort of beautiful.

I’m so glad I decided to use this book for my Read Harder challenge this year, because not only is it in a genre I rarely read but it turns out that it has a sequel and I need more of Okiku and Tarq…especially with the way things closed out at the end.

[littleread1]

Really enjoyed the ghost POV in this story. Definitely added a little something that you don't get often.

[celinenyx]

Horror books in the YA genre often seem to be a rather flimsy excuse for smooching in dark corners rather than providing actual scares. The Girl from the Well does not fit this picture at all, featuring no romance to speak of and scenes reminiscent of popular horror movies like The Ring.

Okiku is a vengeful spirit. She is compelled to hunt those who have killed children, giving them their deserved horrible death. She has subsided in this manner for centuries, but when she notices a boy with strange tattoos, the monotony of her existence is shaken up.

Interestingly, The Girl from the Well is mostly told from Okiku's point of view, yet the focus of the story is not Okiku herself but rather Tark and his cousin Callie. Tark's story is slowly revealed while Okiku observes the humans, seldom interfering herself. In a way, this was rather unsatisfactory - there is little room for emotional depth because Okiku only observes actions. The reader is constantly reminded of a distance between themselves and the characters. Additionally, I would have loved to learn more about Okiku and her past. Many readers aren't very enarmoured with flashbacks, but I think in this case more insights into her past would have strengthened the narrative.

The upside of Okiku's point of view is that The Girl from the Well is written in a highly visual manner. Combined with a subject matter - Japanese mythology - that is relatively in the public conciousness through horror movies such as The Ring, the book provides some very hauntingly familiar images.

Very creepy though ultimately never truly scary because of the distance between the reader and the characters, The Girl from the Well is a short but enjoyable read. Especially its basis in Japanese folklore makes the novel worthwhile.

Actual rating: 3.5 Stars. Find more book reviews over at Nyx Book Reviews.