Cute Aggression

by Emily Lynn

In a quiet town in Thailand, a schoolgirl’s strange obsession with her teacher is festering.The nameless schoolgirl can’t stop thinking about her kind, young history teacher. But her fixation on him isn’t an ordinary teenage crush. She doesn’t want to be with him the way the other girls do. She wants to have him the way one wants a pet.On the last day of the term, she abducts Teacher and keeps him strung up in the attic apartment above the one she and her half deaf-mother live in. The excitement of finally acquiring him, however, is short-lived. The botched abduction has harmed Teacher. As his days of captivity go by, he continues to deteriorate. Her desperate attempts to fix him soon devolve into acts of cruelty as she finds herself confronted by what drove her to obsess over him in the first place.

Genres: Horror

152 pages, Paperback

Published April 5, 2024

Reviews

[✮ osanna aoki ✮ · Rating 4 out of 5]

She liked him the way a girl likes the posters on her wall, the singers in her favorite band, the actors on her TV. He was someone she could look at, but someone who wasn’t meant to look back at her.

This is a story of deranged obsession. An obsession so deep— that a young schoolgirl believes her only reason for existence is to see Teacher.

And at sixteen years old, she’s tired of just spying on Teacher. After four years of snooping and incessant voyeurism— our unnamed student would like to acquire him.

Keep him as a pet, maybe?

So on the last day of the school term, she beats him with a hammer into unconsciousness and holds him hostage in the vacant attic apartment above the one she shares with her mother.

But in the span of just a few days— things begin to go wrong. Our depraved schoolgirl’s obsession begins to dwindle as she realizes Teacher is more than his pristine beauty— but a human in a state of absolute suffering. A human with a body that is capable of obtaining extreme wounds, can bleed and ooze, urinate and vomit, slip in and out of consciousness… and rot. With the condition Teacher is put in by this student, he’s alive— but decaying before her eyes.

He is just a pile of meat.

And as schoolgirl realizes this, her obsession becomes something like disgust mixed with anger. She begins to make things worse— losing her mind and resorting to excruciating violence when she recognizes Teacher is no longer the perfect pet.

When reading books on obsession, you often don’t get a plot where the obsessor eventually falls out of their constant preoccupation. I thought it was very creative of Emily Lynn to take a common trope in horror and spin it. You get to watch the main character dwindle and spiral— contemplating with herself while at the same time, torturing an innocent victim.

At first, I wasn’t into the writing style. But as the book progressed, I got into it more. The story really took off.

It’s a fairly vivid read— and has many descriptive body horror elements. I thought those scenes were written well, and at times it made me feel pretty disgusted. Great job there, for sure!

I’m definitely an Emily Lynn fan now, and I’m looking forward to more in the future. ★ ★ ★ ★ out of five stars for me.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This debut needs way more of an audience. This is a disturbing well written novella about a Sociopath set in Thailand. Warning: This is a very graphic story.

[Andersen Prunty · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing debut. Smart, dark, and profoundly disturbing.

[RobLovesBooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

"She maneuvered unseen between the flow of students. She became more invisible with each person she passed."
"She remembered she had eyelids."
"There was a smell. It smelled like a bathroom. It reeked not of sh*t , but of skin_ years of exfoliated skin trapped in a shower drain."
"She got a shock from seeing her reflection . She always did. She often forgot she was a person at all, and the sudden reminder was always disturbing."

[Avalon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my first time reading a book in this genre and it was so good! The writing was so descriptive and vivid I had to take a break at times. This book kept me on the edge of my seat the whole way through!

[Amiste Renee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn’t put this book down. The slow disconnection from her obsession was fascinating to watch play out. I felt tense throughout the entire book. Absolute madness. Loved it. Can’t wait to read more by Emily!

[John Raptor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was totally blown away by Emily Lynn's debut novel Cute Aggression! It's a gender-swapped story about objectification and sexualized violence. The nameless narrator is a schoolgirl in Thailand who likes to look at Teacher, but does not want to be looked at. She wants him, but only a version of him that lives in her head. When she actually acquires him (by force), she becomes disgusted by how human he is. That he poops and pees and vomits and bleeds. That he is meat; just meat like the fish she filets with her mother in the canning factory. Then she becomes angry at Teacher.

The prose is wet and viscous and you can feel Narrator's guts sloshing and writhing as she commits horrific acts of violence and feels an aching, unhinged disappointment in all of it.

There's so much powerful imagery in this story but I don't want to give too much away. Right now it only has seven reviews on Amazon and it should be way higher than that. Everyone needs to read this book NOW!

If you want a killer feminist book, this is it!

[Gregory · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very imaginative plot. Amazing and difficult book to write. Throughout the novel, Lynn. describes what the main character, a disturbed teenage girl, is experiencing as she carries out her horrific, yet, strangely enough, well meaning acts. It is definitely a page turner and , since it's only around 150 pages, it can be easily read in one or two sittings.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this was so stressful but it is so well-written and intriguing that I had to keep turning the page. The things poor Teacher endures while he's trapped in the attic are awful. :( I look forward to reading more stuff by Emily Lynn.