Mi-ae Seo

This was such a fantastic slowburn thriller! I was on edge the entire time reading this. It was part 'Silence of the Lambs', part 'Baby Teeth'.

I liked how the story would switch from the interviews with the main character, Seonkyeong and the serial killer, to Seonkyeong trying to connect with her step daughter, Hayeong. It was interesting to watch Seonkyeong piece together the similarities with Yi Byeongdo and Hayeong as the plot progressed.

The characters were incredibly well written and felt real; I kept finding myself wanting to read more about what the step daughter was going to do next.

Highly recommend checking this one out if you're looking for a good psychological thriller!… (mere)

Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!

THE ONLY CHILD is a very dark book that explores the mind of a fictional serial killer while contrasting his behavior with Hayeong, the main character’s stepdaughter. Seonkyeong is a criminal psychologist who is summoned to prison to interview the notorious killer Yi Byeongdo. As she delves deeper into his mind through his stories, she notices how his mannerisms mirror that of 11-year-old Hayeong, who has recently come to live with her and her husband after a fire destroys her house.

The story is told from multiple points of view, with a concerted effort to make Byeongdo appear somewhat sympathetic. Hayeong is a manipulative little girl and I disliked her immediately. Seonkyeong’s husband brings his daughter into the house and soon becomes an absentee father, only seeing the “good” side of the girl.

The plot could have used a bit of tightening up, as it takes a while to establish Hayeong’s dark side. There is a longish portion regarding the “punishment” of a cat which could have been shorter yet still convey the latent evil that was lurking that day. There is also a series of dithering by Seonkyeong in which she alternately fears the girl, then feels sorry for her due to the tragedies that have befallen her. She seems almost blind to the danger that Hayeong poses to her family.

Most of the action occurs around the last 15% of the book, as the serial killer escapes jail while the tension between the psychologist and the girl comes to a head. The ending itself is a shocker yet I felt it wasn’t a surprise.

None of these characters are truly given life; I am not sure if it is due to the original work being translated, or if it is the writer’s style. (Click here for information on more Korean mysteries being translated into English.) There is only the briefest of backstory and Seonkyeong is not portrayed as a strong female character. Certainly someone of her background would have better sense regarding Hayeong’s penchant for evil. Again, this could be due to the culture, as Asian women are not known for taking the lead and being dominant. In any case, I wish she had been given more of a backbone, especially as she began discovering Hayeong’s secrets.

I would like to see a sequel to this book to see what happens next with the characters. The ending does leave room for another story, and I can imagine different plot twists taking place. All in all, not a bad read.… (mere)

Yi Byeongdo is a serial killer sitting on death row. He hasn’t said much to anyone about the murders he’s committed and the police are anxious to learn just how many murders there were. Unexpectedly, Yi Byeongdo has asked to be interviewed by a criminal psychologist by the name of Seonkyeong. Seonkyeong has no idea why Yi Byeongdo has singled her out as she does not know him.

Seonkyeong has just been surprised by her husband with the arrival of his eleven-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, Hayeong. There has been a fire and Hayeong’s grandparents with whom she was living have died. Seonkyeong is anxious to help Hayeong feel at home but soon starts to feel out of her depth. Seonkyeong starts to see quite a few similarities in the histories of both Yi Byeongdo and Hayeong.

I must say that I was disappointed with this one. I have enjoyed the writing of other Korean authors and apparently Mi-ae Seo is a bestselling thriller author and screenwriter in Korea. I just could not get into this story and found it to be written in quite a lackluster way. There were moments when I thought, OK, here we go, but then nothing much happened. For being a criminal psychologist, Seonkyeong’s thinking and decisions were disconcerting. She should have known better in so many instances and that leant the book a feeling of unreality. There were quite a few unbelievable incidents in the book. While the author did a good job of weaving the separate storylines together, all I could think at the ending of the book was “You have to be kidding”.

Hopefully this book will find an audience that will love it but it’s not one that I can honestly recommend, even though it did have its moments.

This book was given to me by the publisher in return for an honest review.… (mere)