Aviary

by Maria Dong

A young woman undertakes a terrifying journey—and a terrifying transformation—in this genre-blending speculative suspense novel set in South Korea and the US which mixes fantasy, gothic vibes and queer longing, with a shot of feminist body horror.

Fairytales are for children.
Until the day we awaken in a place full of monsters,
being softly enveloped by the dark.

Nineteen-year-old undocumented immigrant Hee-Jin lies on the floor of her cramped Seoul apartment, listening for footsteps.

But the knock on the door isn’t the police finally coming to deport her to North Korea. Instead, sprawled on the doorstep is a disfigured, bird-like corpse—and it has her eyes. Her younger sister, artist Hee-Young, is meant to be on an art program in America, not dead of a strange overdose.

But in Hee-Young’s pocket is a plane ticket and US passport. Seeing her chance for freedom, Hee-Jin steals her sister’s identity and takes her place, determined to uncover what really happened to her.

But the deeper she dives into the program’s strange workings, the closer she gets to the monstrous secret at its heart.

A page-turner of a mystery filled with gorgeous, creepy Korean folklore and imagery, Aviary, written by critically acclaimed Korean American author Maria Dong, is also a story about power, violence, exploitation—and transformation. And, above all, it's about the choices women make from within a system where all the available options are bad ones.

Genres: Horror, Queer, Fantasy, Lesbian, Fiction, LGBT, Adult

321 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 7, 2026

Reviews

[megs_bookrack · Rating 2 out of 5]

Aviary begins with 19-year old Hee-Jin huddled down on the floor of her dingy Seoul apartment. She's tense and nervous. We quickly understand that life hasn't been an easy road for Hee-Jin. A knock on the door startles her. Is it the police, coming to ship her off to North Korea?

As an undocumented immigrant, this is a constant concern for her. Opening the door, she discovers not the judgemental glares of the police, but the disfigured, bird-like corpse of her younger sister, Hee-Young.



Hee-Jin is shocked. She can't make sense of it. The last she knew Hee-Young was in America, enrolled in an exclusive and cutting-edge Art Program. Hee-Young was succeeding in pursuing her dreams. What is she doing back in Seoul, dead from an apparent bizarre overdose?

Searching her pockets, Hee-Jin discovers Hee-Young's passport and a return ticket to America. Seeing her chance for freedom, Hee-Jin assumes her sister's identity, takes the passport, the ticket, and hopefully Hee-Young's place within this mysterious program. She's determined to figure out what happened to her sister.



Before you come at me for spoilers, please note, all the above information can be found within the Publisher's synopsis and it sold me. This sounded suspenseful and I wanted to know what happened to Hee-Young.

I was quite invested in the beginning. Hee-Jin ends up getting to America quickly. This all takes place by 11% into the novel. I really enjoyed the entire opening section.

By 17%, however, the pace slows down and a new perspective is introduced, Callie. She's a woman with a connection to the Arts Program that Hee-Young was attending. I found her perspective extremely tedious and boring. That fact didn't change throughout.



I had anticipated that Hee-Jin getting to America and immersing herself within Hee-Young's life would increase the tension. I was expecting a steady build throughout, but it didn't feel that way to me. Hee-Jin felt like such a passive character. I was expecting her to be digging around with haste, trying to figure out what happened to Hee-Young, but I didn't feel like that developed as it could have.

Additionally, it took forever to get anywhere and even when things did start to kick off, I didn't find them particularly earth-shattering, or even compelling. Callie's sections really slowed down the pace for me since I had zero interest in her.

I would have much preferred to either just follow Hee-Jin, or perhaps to have had Hee-Jin more actively pursuing the truth in the present timeline, and then having a past perspective following Hee-Young, where we actually discover what happened to her at the Art Program.



By 65% in, I was mentally checked out. I just wanted it to be over. Oofh, I'm sorry. I know this sounds salty, but I have to be honest about my experience. I'm sure this author is a lovely human, because of the care spent on these characters, but this book felt like it would never end for me.

While the novel comes in at 321-pages, I felt like I was plodding through a 721-page tome. I'm sure many will value the important topics touched upon and social commentary, but I needed it to be a lot punchier than it is.



Thank you to the publisher, Severn House, for providing me a copy to read and review.

While this didn't appeal to my particular tastes, I'm sure many Readers are going to be able to connect with it more than I did.

[Zana · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

Midsommar meets... current events?

Part thriller and part social commentary, this novel was dark and depressing as hell. If you're a fan of social thrillers like Get Out or Parasite, then Aviary might be the novel for you.

The main plot was pretty straightforward and hit all of the thriller story beats, so there was nothing new there. The villain reveal was also pretty predictable, hence why this wasn't a 4 star or higher read for me.

But what this novel really excelled at was Hee-Jin's characterization, which was the most interesting POV out of the two. An undocumented immigrant in Korea who found a lifeline out by impersonating her artist sister? Even though Hee-Jin has zero art skills?

Sure, why not.

Side note, you seriously have to suspend your disbelief for that plotline. I'm not joking. (Hee-Jin attempted to work with clay, while pretending to be an actual artist in a studio with other actual artists, and that was difficult for me to wrap my head around.)

There was another POV character, Callie. But honestly, I wasn't too fond of her. I liked her mixed race representation, but other than that, she wasn't really an interesting or sympathetic character.

While the Midsommar vibes and the social commentary were pretty predictable from the get-go, I actually enjoyed reading about Hee-Jin's experiences in Korea as a poor and undocumented immigrant working under the table to survive. With no papers and no schooling, it wasn't difficult to see why she'd concoct a scheme to steal her sister's identity and create a new life for herself abroad. The bits and pieces we get about Korean culture and history were also some of my favorite parts of this novel.

Other than that, the plot for this story was pretty predictable, or else I would've rated this much higher. I think if you're new to thrillers with social commentary, you might enjoy this. If you're a fan of this genre, I'd recommend that you manage your expectations.

Thank you to Severn House and NetGalley for this arc.

[Violet · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great start, using tropes I quite enjoy, the young woman who gets a job in a fancy corporation or group or foundation (Ling Ling Huang used that very same premise recently with both Natural Beauty and Immaculate Conception), here a young woman who grew up in China and Korea, a priori the daughter of a North Korean refugee, who starts a new life in an artist residency in Pittsburg. As per the trope, not everything is what it seems, there's a lot of secrets, mysterious older men with lots of money, new drugs and malevolent technology...

I found the execution a bit messy, the character is often drugged, dreaming, having hallucinations and there are many characters, so it wasn't particularly straightforward. Which is fine but the whole raison d'être for the weird mansion and maniac project didn't feel clear to me when I reached the last page, which was a shame.

Free ARC sent by Netgalley.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.75 ⭐️
This book felt very chaotic and I was hoping the ending would pay off, but I’m just not quite sure that it did.

We are following Hee-Jin who is an undocumented immigrant in South Korea. Her mother has died, her sister fled to the US under mysterious circumstances and Hee-Jin is just trying to make it day to day. One day she gets a knock on her door and it’s her sister… but she is dead.
It looks like an overdose… but is it?

Hee-Jin sees this as an opportunity to get out of her circumstances… so she steals her sisters identity and goes to the US.

I really enjoyed the social commentary, following Hee-Jin as she finds herself in a very dangerous situation… but outside of that the plot was messy that it made it hard to really enjoy.

There was another POV that I don’t think was really necessary and took away from the mystery of Hee-Jin’s sister. The ending still didn’t make everything come together—even with the big reveal.

I do think there is a lot of potential with this author though and I would love to see more from them.

Thank you Severn house for the gifted book. All opinions are my own.

[Quilted.reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book absolutely wrecked me in the best way.Aviary is a genre bending gothic speculative horror that follows Hee-Jin a nineteen year old undocumented immigrant living in South Korea who is constantly waiting for the knock on the door that could destroy her life. Instead of the police what she finds is something far worse and deeply surreal: a disfigured bird like corpse on her doorstep that has her eyes. From there the story spirals into something dark, unsettling, and impossible to look away from.When Hee-Jin discovers that her younger sister Hee-Young who was supposed to be in an art program in the U.S. has died under suspicious circumstances, she makes a desperate choice. She takes her sister’s identity and travels to America in her place, determined to uncover what really happened. What she finds is a program that hides monstrous secrets beneath its glossy surface, blending Korean folklore, body horror, and feminist rage in a way that feels both intimate and terrifying.This book touches on so many heavy, important themes: cultural appropriation and fetishization, trauma, femme rage, queerness, sexism, oppression, racism, and the ways systems exploit women especially immigrant women for their bodies, labor, and creativity. The body horror isn’t there just to shock it’s deeply symbolic and purposeful. Every transformation feels like a metaphor for survival in a world that demands pieces of you just to let you exist.What really stayed with me is how Aviary explores choice specifically the choices women make when every available option is a bad one. There’s no clean escape, no perfect solution, just survival, rage, and transformation. The writing is haunting and filled with eerie imagery pulled from Korean folklore.If you love gothic vibes, queer longing, feminist horror, and stories that are unapologetically angry and strange, this book deserves a spot on your shelf. Aviary isn’t just a story it’s an experience.

[Caitlin · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.75/5

Thank you, Netgalley and the publisher for this eARC

I had really high hopes for this, but I was let down. There was so much happening in this that it feels like the author lost the plot. So many things were not wrapped up or addressed... and the message was ultimately lost.

I don't mind a dual POV, but in this case... I don't think Callie needed to be a character at all. She didn't contribute much, and things could have easily happened without her.

There's a lot of futuristic science or magical realism in this, but none of it is explained. I don't mind magical realism, but this wasn't executed well. What was up with the serums? How is the house "responding" to Callie? Why birds? All of this is just left unanswered.

I was hoping this would land in the category of top tier weird girl lit / horror, but unfortunately it was a huge miss for me. The body gore was okay and maybe the only redeeming factor in the end.

[The Blog Without a Face · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Spines Were a Red Flag, In Retrospect
BWAF Score: 7/10

TL;DR: Dong constructs a gilded cage and then makes you smell the metal. Aviary is gothic horror as immigration nightmare as feminist rage, held together by a compulsively readable protagonist: a stateless woman with a dead sister’s passport and a survival instinct so finely tuned it reads like a superpower. The house will stay with you. Hee-Jin will haunt you longer.

The first thing I noticed was the onggi pot. Not the dead body at the door, not the mysterious spines covering her sister’s skin, not the American passport tucked into a sweater pocket like a folded prayer. The pot. Hee-Jin’s mother taught her to keep one inside herself, a clay vessel where feelings go to ferment and die, a place that breathes air in while keeping water out, tight as a secret. Every grief, every terror, every piece of love she wasn’t allowed to want gets dropped in there. The lid goes on. The world keeps moving.

I have been trying, for weeks now, to describe what Maria Dong does in this book, and I keep coming back to that pot. Not because it’s a symbol. Because it’s a survival technology. Because Hee-Jin isn’t broken in the way we’re used to seeing traumatized women be broken in fiction. She is functional in the way that people who have survived terrible things are functional: precisely, relentlessly, with almost no margin for error. And reading her sections of this novel feels like watching someone walk a wire so thin you can’t see it from the ground.

Aviary is, on its surface, a gothic thriller. A stateless Korean woman in her twenties, living in Seoul under someone else’s identity, finds her estranged sister dead at her back door, transformed by something inexplicable into a body covered in spines and drained of teeth, eyes huge and dark as coins. She takes the dead woman’s passport, boards a plane to Pittsburgh, and impersonates her at a remote artist’s mentorship program run by a wealthy man named Shepherd in a white house on a Pennsylvania hill, a house with a giant glass heart on top that catches the light and sends it everywhere at once. She goes because she has no other options. She goes because the table is hot, and if you say it enough times while pressing your hands flat, eventually your skin changes.

The house itself is fantastic. Dong has built something legitimately strange here: a Victorian manor converted into an art installation, the first floor rigged with proximity sensors and hidden gears so the walls respond to the emotional state of the woman who runs it, Callie, the ex-wife who haunts the place because she has nowhere else to go. When Callie’s heart rate spikes, the ceiling shudders. When she’s angry, shutters bang. The house is her body externalized, and it is also, the novel makes clear, her prison. The glass sculpture on the roof, a human heart suspended on metal legs like a specimen, was built from a mold she made with her own hands years before, when she was still capable of making things. Shepherd took it and blew it up to architectural scale while she was unconscious in a hospital bed. The book is full of this kind of violence, the kind dressed in devotion.

Dong’s prose is absolutely gothic. Sentences that accumulate detail the way fear accumulates, slowly, then all at once. The psychomanteum scene, where Hee-Jin is dosed with LSD and floated on a spinning platform while the drugged women around her begin to look wrong in their bodies, each deformation more quietly horrifying than the last, is the kind of sustained hallucinatory writing that reminds you what genre fiction can do when it decides to be literature. I read it twice. I didn’t want to but I did.

Dong has called her work anti-capitalist and feminist, which is accurate but undersells it, the way calling a wound political undersells the blood. She is the author of Liar, Dreamer, Thief, a debut that earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly and built a readership hungry for exactly this kind of psychologically dense, genre-slippery suspense. Her second novel, Psychopomp, went harder into science fiction while staying inside the same thematic obsessions: systems that consume people, the mental health costs of survival, the way capitalism turns bodies into resources. She’s described the origin of that book as miles of highway commutes in the dark, watching what isolation does to a person. Aviary feels like the third point in a triangle she’s been tracing, a Korean American woman writing about women trapped in beautiful structures that exist to extract everything from them until there’s nothing left. The mentorship program at the Petite Sea House is eventually revealed to be something the mirrors these themes. Dong is also a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for her short story “In the Beginning of Me, I was a Bird,” and that title does something to you once you understand what Aviary means. What the glass heart means. What it means to be kept somewhere beautiful and airless and called cherished.

What doesn’t always work is Callie. Her point of view alternates with Hee-Jin’s throughout, and the design is smart: Callie is the woman who built this dream before it became what it is, who suspects something is wrong but loves her ex-husband enough to keep explaining it away, and watching her almost-understand the truth is supposed to be its own kind of horror. And it is. But Dong asks us to follow Callie through her longing for Shepherd over many dozens of pages, and eventually that longing starts to feel less like atmospheric tragedy and more like a structural decision in need of an edit. Sometimes it holds. Sometimes you’re checking to see how many pages are left.

The body horror of Hee-Young’s transformation, those spines, those eyes, the mouth full of darkness and a resin ring filed from the shaft behind a painting, is specific enough to feel strange rather than merely decorative. I believed it. But the novel never fully integrates it with the trafficking plot at its center, and by the end I understood what it meant thematically without feeling that the seams were invisible. This is the honest truth about Aviary: it’s a book with more ambition than any single novel can contain, and it says something good about Dong that the excess is the kind that comes from trying to do too much rather than too little.

What it does perfectly is Hee-Jin. Every chapter in her voice is evidence that Dong understands something essential about how the voiceless observe the powerful: how much data you accumulate when no one’s paying attention to you, how fast you learn to read a room when the wrong reading costs you everything. Her desire for Ksenia, the enigmatic Kazakh-Russian woman whose ancestors were Koryo-saram, Koreans exiled to Central Asia by Stalin on ghost trains that smelled of the dying, is written with the specific, helpless clarity of someone who knows wanting something will hurt but cannot stop. I want so badly that I can’t speak, so badly I feel like folding over in my chair. That’s the book’s sentence. That’s what it’s about.

The Korean folklore is a lovely touch. Yu-hwa, daughter of a river god, her lips stretched until she couldn’t speak, exiled by her own father for being wanted by the wrong man. Shim Cheong, who leaps into the ocean as a sacrifice so her blind father can have the rice he promised to a temple. These women appear as epigraphs and as mirrors and as the oldest articulation of what the novel argues: that women’s bodies have always been the currency of other people’s bargains, and that this arrangement has been called beauty, has been called protection, has been called love. The book doesn’t let you forget it. The book will not politely look away.

You will read the final movement of this novel in a single session. I don’t think you’ll have a choice.

[Gayle (OutsmartYourShelf) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hee-Jin is currently keeping a low profile & working under a false name in Seoul whilst dreading the day that the police arrive to deport her back to North Korea. When her sister Hee-Young turns up dying of some kind of overdose which is causing strange growths all over her face & body, Hee-Jin starts to panic. Her sister is supposed to be on an art program in America not dying on her doorstep, but then she realises it offers her an opportunity. Hee-Jin decides to steal her sister's identity & plane ticket back to America.

When Hee-Jin arrives in America, a man at the airport momentarily mistakes her for Hee-Young. Shepherd runs the art facility & when he learns that Hee-Young is dead, he offers Hee-Jin the chance to earn money by pretending to be her sister. It's an odd offer but she doesn't have much choice. There are several other young women at the house overseen by a woman named Callie, but as Hee-Jin settles in she starts to question everything. Why is there an undercurrent of distrust amongst the women? Who are the strange silent 'facilitators' who carry out all the menial work? & What is the deal with art patrons? No, something is badly wrong here - can Hee-Jin trust anyone let alone escape?

This is one of the strangest books I've ever read & I'm still not sure I understood all of what was going on. I knew where Callie's story was heading but the rest of it was surreal &, at times, I wasn't sure which bits were hallucinations/dreams & what was real. It also left me with a lot of unanswered questions. I did enjoy the Korean folklore side of things & wished that there had been more of that, but I found the rest of it only OK. 3.25 stars (rounded down)

SUMMARY:
Plot: Average - Started off well but became confusing. Enjoyed the Korean folklore parts & wished there had been more.
Writing Style: Fair - I found it a bit confusing at times & the ending left me with a lot of questions.
Enjoyment Level: Medium - Good enough to keep me reading it, but ended up slightly disappointed overall.

My thanks to NetGalley & publishers, Severn House, for the opportunity to read an ARC.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aviary follows Hee-Jin, an undocumented immigrant who finds her younger sister dead and disfigured on her doorstep. But when Hee-Jin finds a plane ticket and US passport in her sister’s pocket, she steals her identity and a chance at freedom, determined to uncover what really happened to her at the art program she was supposed to be at. But the deeper Hee-Jin goes, the closer she gets to the monstrous secret at its heart.

Aviary is a whirlwind of a story - it begins with a slow, disorienting pull before building into something enrapturing, grotesque, and completely compelling.

I loved Hee-Jin and Callie as characters. They’re complex and shaped by their own struggles, each a victim in different ways, yet their resilience and desire for safety and control make them impossible not to root for. The alternating perspectives between them work beautifully, and a lot of the story’s emotional weight stems from their heartbreak, their pasts, and their determination to carve out something secure in an unforgiving world.

The narrative asks for a little bit of patience to start with, as it unfolds slowly and is occasionally disorientating at first, but the unease that comes from that initial confusion is deliberate and very effective. The eerie atmosphere is further intensified by the Korean folklore woven throughout, which enriches the story whilst deepening its exploration of power, exploitation, and vulnerability, all whilst subtly subverting traditional fairytale expectations.

The prose feels artfully crafted, almost hallucinogenic at times, often blurring the lines between reality and the surreal to create a reading experience that’s both beautiful and unsettling. Then, as everything begins to take shape, the tension escalates the story into something electric and haunting that was hard to put down.

Thank you so much to Severn House for sending me this copy to read and review. My opinions are my own.

[Karli · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to love this book, it sounded so interesting however I struggled big time. There were many times that I wanted to DNF it. I really didnt enjoy Callie's chapters and I am a bit confused on why she even had a POV. At times it kind of felt like two different books going on at once. I dont think its objectively a bad book, it just really had a lot of elements that I don't love. I wanted it be a bit stranger and not so dependent on hallucinations for adding mystery and weirdness. I also wanted more on the transformation, the craziness of these women appearing to be transformed for art like they were some kind of experiment for the men to do as they wished. I went into this book expecting beaked feathered women. I feel like the horror was kind of a footnote and this book was mostly just a thriller on sex trafficking (which obviously is a worthy topic just not one that I'm interested in reading about). The Shepherd twist felt obvious and he felt a bit to villiany. The ending as well felt a bit rushed, especially compared to how slow the middle dragged for me.

I LOVED the Korean folklore and history wrapped into this book. I actually learned so many things about Korea that I hadnt known before and was eagerly sharing them with my husband.

Thank you to Netgalley & Severn House for the free arc.

[Stasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the fence between three and four stars, but rounding up because despite its flaws, this is stay-up-all-night page turner. Hee Jin, an undocumented immigrant in South Korea, opens her door to find her estranged sister, Hee Young, slumped over dead and covered in spines. Finding her sister’s surprising US passport, she makes it to Pittsburgh and is approached by Hee Young’s mysterious benefactor. He promises her money and stability if she can fool a wealthy patron of the arts by pretending to be her sister.

The first quarter of the book is mysterious, weird, and fast paced. The rest of the book is still engaging and unsettling, but it requires A LOT of suspension of disbelief to make it through. Some of the action felt so rushed and dependent on delirium that I wondered if it was an attempt to obfuscate that the author wasn’t sure where to go.

That being said though, this is still a wild ride with interesting blurbs about Korean folklore and commentary on Western fetishization and exploitation. I could absolutely see this being made into a big budget movie. Like they say in the aviary itself “you’re safe. Just enjoy the ride.”

[amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 rounded up ✨
tbh speculative fiction within the subgenre of horror, female rage or weird girl lit is my absolute FAV. i was so connected to hee-jin’s character it was like i was in her mind the whole novel. actually beautifully done first person pov, it was really well done.

i’ve read arc reviews saying the plot/villain etc was predictable but idk i don’t think it was. i was wondering what in the fresh hell was going on, lost as hell right alongside hee-jin. i mean, i had some idea and i had theories but i didn’t feel like i ended anywhere predictable.

the only reason i wouldn’t go full 5 is bc there were some details that were explained too quickly, i wasn’t a fan of callie’s pov (even tho its important for context) and there were some questions at the end i didn’t get answered. i still really enjoyed my time with hee-jin and oh my GAWD the body horror. a great novel!!

edit: oh how can i forget!! the korean folklore thru the book??? BEST PART. i loved it soo much and the care that was taken to address the horrors of fetishisation and abuse of culture for selfish pleasure. SO good.

[Steph (starrysteph) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aviary is a richly disorienting descent into body horror, autonomy, medical experimentation, and the ways we contort ourselves in order to survive.

Hee-Jin has lived most of her life in fear: she’s an undocumented immigrant in South Korea, just trying to make it one day at a time. When her artistic little sister Hee-Young knocks their special knock, Hee-Jin opens the door to a nightmare. Her sister, dying of an apparent overdose, with bird-like disfigurations.

There’s nothing Hee-Jin can do to save her, but as she says her goodbyes, she finds an authentic-looking US passport and a plane ticket. So what’s there to do but take her sister’s place? And that place happens to be in a bizarre art program in Pittsburgh, where the house feels alive and every fellow young foreign resident has her own secrets. Hee-Jin has to figure out the truth of Hee-Young’s death before the program transforms her, too.

“I’ve thought long and hard about how to tell you this story. If I gave you the truth – about me and my sister, the house and the cold and the hunger – you’d know, but you wouldn’t understand … Every detail that didn’t match your own life would become another sandbag against your fear. When you felt safe enough, different enough, exceptional enough, you would forget.”

Hee-Jin’s narration is never reliable: between being dosed with mystery drugs & losing snatches of time, struggling to fully understand English, and being the newcomer to the program, she’s always a bit on the outside looking in. And yet she is a force. The choices she faces every day are equally terrible, and she never gives up fighting. She’s used to sacrificing and surviving and performatively submitting to those with the power to harm her. But she sees a chance at freedom and also feels a deep need to understand exactly what happened to her sister, and so she presses on and survives. Her characterization was excellent.

Our other narrator is Callie, the wife of the program’s leader (Shepherd), and an equally questionable narrator. Her dream is what birthed this program, and she can’t see all the ways in which it has been warped (and the truth about her husband). She has her own buried (and not-so-buried) trauma, and she’s lost so much memory and yearns so much for safety that it’s made her much more naive and trusting. Callie has more access in some ways and is cut off more than the girls in others. I definitely resonated a bit less with her POV chapters, but they were very helpful in painting a fuller picture of the true atrocities of this house.

There is so much horror here, beyond spines emerging from your skin. The horror of never belonging anywhere, of never having safety or home or a place to land. The horror of having to perform your culture (usually very incorrectly, often offensively) to please those in power. The horror of exploitation and trafficking. The horror of understanding that what's happening to you is wrong, but being unable to figure out exactly why or how to escape it. The endless tiny-but-sharp paper cut horrors of survival.

I think the only stumbles for me here were a bit of a lack of big-picture clarity (and resolution to the trafficking angle), and some of Callie’s narration. She’s a bit of a circular thinker and sometimes her chapters dragged. And I just wanted to know more about the inner workings of the home & program. I also genuinely think we could have gone deeper into the weird aspects!

I thought the prose and slowly-escalating body horror was brilliant. Each moment of body warping felt so specific – these details really helped immerse me in what was otherwise a fever dream. I also enjoyed the interludes of Korean folklore, mostly stories of women and their bodies being exploited, which bled right into the main plotline. It’s a nice mixture of psychological thriller and horror as well.

If you like creepy distorted houses and commentary on spectacle & exploitation and monstrous manipulative men clinging to their power and unnerving body horror and Korean folklore and even a bit of sapphic longing … you’re going to vibe with this one.

CW: murder, death (children & other loved ones), body horror, medical experimentation, cultural appropriation, sexual assault, drugging, car accident, memory loss, racism, fetishization, gaslighting, confinement, vomit

Follow me on social media for book recommendations!

(I received an advance reader copy of this book; this is my honest review.)

[Nicole Austin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley and Severn House for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

“Aviary” by Maria Dong is one of those books that’s less about a clean, straightforward plot and more about the experience; and wow, it’s a weird, haunting, sometimes confusing, but very memorable ride.

The story follows Hee-Jin, an undocumented immigrant in Korea who’s basically been living her whole life trying to stay invisible so she doesn’t get deported. Her situation already feels tense and fragile, but things take a wild turn when her sister dies under mysterious circumstances, and Hee-Jin decides to take her identity and go to the U.S. in her place. Which is already messy, but it only gets stranger from there.

She ends up at this elite art residency that immediately gives off “something is very wrong here” vibes. Think secretive rich people, experimental projects, and a whole lot of unsettling, dreamlike weirdness. It definitely leans into that Midsommar-style atmosphere where everything looks beautiful and curated on the surface but is actually deeply disturbing underneath.

What really stands out is Hee-Jin as a character. Her perspective is easily the most compelling with her desperation, her fear, and the choices she makes all feel very grounded, even when the plot gets surreal. The book does a really good job showing how someone in her position could end up doing something as extreme as stealing her sister’s identity just to survive.

The themes are heavy. We’re talking immigration, exploitation, racism, cultural appropriation, sexism, and just the general way systems take advantage of vulnerable people, especially women. There’s also a strong thread of feminist anger running through the story, which gives a lot of the horror real emotional weight.

And speaking of horror… it’s not just creepy; it’s gross in a very intentional way. There’s body horror, strange transformations, and imagery that’s both disturbing and symbolic. It’s the kind of horror that’s meant to make you uncomfortable and make you think.

That said, the book can get a bit messy. There are multiple POVs, lots of dreamlike or hallucination-like sequences, and moments where it’s hard to tell what’s real. Some plot points feel unclear by the end, and the “big reveal” isn’t super shocking if you’ve read similar social thrillers before. You might also have to suspend your disbelief a bit, especially with the whole “pretending to be an artist with zero experience” situation.

But honestly? Even with those flaws, it works.

The writing is vivid and atmospheric, and the story has this lingering, unsettling quality that sticks with you after you finish. It doesn’t tie everything up neatly, but that almost adds to the vibe; it’s more about the questions and the feelings than clear answers.

Overall, “Aviary” is a dark, genre-blending mix of gothic horror, social commentary, and surreal thriller. It’s not always easy to follow, and it definitely won’t be for everyone, but if you like strange, thought-provoking stories with a lot of bite (literally and metaphorically), it’s a really compelling read.

[Mariah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aviary is a psychological narrative that guts your core through that chill in your bones and leaves you thinking about it for days. A queer narrative that deconstructs the horrors of societal expectations. A modern gothic with a Korean American perspective that is rich in diction and riveting loud register. Maria Dong’s voice shines brightly through her protagonist that deconstructs the western social norms. The Korean-American perspective is explored through the character’s psyche and her language. This delivers a bloody wrench into the throes of a narrative that experience otherness within the horrors of the human condition.
The monster’s around us are hidden in plain sight because they appear to be hidden behind charm and excessive deceit. Hee-Young is determined to discover her truth and that comes with gut curdling shocks that will twist your insides. The sheer detail of the narrative is both descriptive and horrifying at each discovery with the protagonist. There is something riveting about the way writing can both gross you out with its description but intrigue you to discover the horrors of the monster within. There is always something inherently speculative when you discuss the human condition and the way it destroys your body physically and mentally.
What does it mean to be stuck in a mystery that drives you through leagues of madness? There is a toll to pay when we discover secrets that were mean to say buried. That is the nature of a Shelley style monster that exists within the human condition. There is this need to question our environment because our intuition is warning us of the wave of horror. That is the predicament our protagonist finds herself in when she takes the US passport to unravel the secrets. The sapphic longing will have you on the edge of your seat wondering when it will happen – if it happens.
Truly an eerie novel that shines brightly in the aviary of horrors and wonder. I enjoyed every moment of this narrative and read it in a day. But I have still been thinking about it and anticipate it may be lingering for a hot moment. This is the horror to dive in before the season gets spooky. Take a walk this spring into the dark side of humanity and how we battle those demons around us. Thank you Maria Dong, Severn House, and Netgalley for this advanced digital copy. All opinions are my own.

For more recommendations, reviews, and tarot readings, check out my blog https://brujerialibrary.wordpress.com/

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. I don’t think I read the whole synopsis when I requested a copy of the book and just saw Korean folklore and said sign me up as I love learning new things from other cultures. Recently I have not been gelling with horror books about art/artists so when I got to the part in the book where you find out the sister was involved with some art program in the US I did think oh, this is what this book is? And was a bit disappointed as I was loving the story up until then…until I read on and loved it just as much as I did the first parts. It was a great read.

Hee-Jin has spent her whole life trying to be invisible. To not rock the boat, to not have anyone notice her as that could get her deported. She learned the lessons well from her mom and hopes that one day she will be able to live a life less full of worry and stress. When her sister. Hee-Young, dies on her doorstep and she finds her US Passport and a plane ticket back there leaving in a few hours she takes it and pretends to be her sister. She hopes to find a better life in the US, and gets roped into pretending to be her sister in the art program she was participating in, which of course doesn’t go the way she planned. She has to figure out what is really going on and what really happened to her sister.

This whole book was such a fun read. I loved the writing and how everything started to get so dream-like at times. If I had one slight complaint it is that I wanted more of the shows in the aviary! The whole situation was so strange and I loved it. You know pretty much right away when Hee-Jin arrives at the art house what is going on (maybe not exact details, but in general) and I thought that might detrack from the story, but somehow it didn’t. I also got to the end and didn’t have all the answers, but again I was fine with that. I was so involved in the story and didn’t want it to end. I can’t wait to read more from this author!

Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book

[Nicola . . · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an amazing book this was. It manages to be beautifully written but also grotesque and terrifying.

The story follows Hee-Jin, an undocumented woman in South Korea, poor and living in squalor.

When Hee-Jin's sister knocks at her door and shortly after dies with a very unusual appearance. Hee-Jin doesn't hesitate to steal her sister's identity and travels to America. There she finds herself enrolled in a mysterious and elite art program. Slowly she discovers all is not quite right within the Art program, the artists chosen are not there for their artistic talent and what follows is quite shocking and disturbing when we realize the leader intends to make a very unusual art exhibition.

I honestly had no idea what was happening through quite a lot of this story but the beautiful writing and need to discover what was going on had me completely hooked. I was rotting for Hee-Jin from the start, she's smart, resilient and does she what she needs to do to survive. While she is very much a victim of her circumstances in this book, she's never acted like one and I really loved her as a protagonist. She does make some morally questionable decisions but only because she has no good choices available to her.

The book is quite a slow read but really ramps up towards the end when we find out a lot more about what is happening. The art program and people involved do feel wrong right from the start but it progressively becomes worse and more horrific slowly through the book culminating in some pretty gross body horror.

I spent a long time thinking about this book after reading it and the more I think about it the better it becomes. It's an extremely clever, haunting story that will stay with me for a long, long time.

[Jazmyn Hartman · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up to 4

This is an immensely powerful, thought provoking, terrifying novel. With almost a stream of consciousness writing, Maria Dong's prose is beautiful, haunting, rich with history and folklore. I absolutely loved the inserts of folklore, and tales, as well as the painful, visceral history Koreans have endured. As horrific as this novel is, it's full of powerful topics written in such a mindful way. This book isn't just a mysterious thriller with body horror, it ambitiously covers racism, sexism, cultural appropriation and fetishizing, cult like behavior, and more. I'm finding myself continuously pondering Hee-Jin's situation, stuck in a foreign place, yearning for answers about her sister, it's no wonder she would lose some of herself, while also rediscovering her passions and loves. This is definitely a book that sits with you, one you'll think about late at night, or pouring your morning coffee. Truly impactful.

Hee-Jin and Hee-Young have always dealt with struggles, after their mother dies they don't see eye to eye. Hey-Jin staying behind, while Hee-Young tries to be something more and find herself. Hee-Jin just wants to be the shadow on the wall, to creep through life unseen, undetected. When her sister end up on her doorstep, dead, she wants answers. No, she NEEDS answers. Taking Hee-Young's passport and papers, she boards a plain and goes to Pennsylvania, where her sister was staying. Taking over her identity, and her place in an artistic program, Hee-Young - now Hee-Jin - must navigate this new world, while gathering clues about her sister's death. Finding, and losing parts of herself, she truly transforms anew.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Darkly psychological and off-putting, Aviary leads you down to the depths of depravity and disorientation to tell a story of loss, perseverance, and the small flame of hope that blooms when all seems terrible.

The best part of the story for me was the focus on the beginning with Hee-jin and her trials and struggles with living in South Korea as an undocumented immigrant. It felt raw and is a powerful commentary on the fear and danger of living this way when no other options are available. Once the setting moves to the main location, the house felt indescribably difficult to picture overall, despite the author's precise descriptions of its rooms and framing.

The plot itself was easy to follow and beyond the details of the mysteries of the house, it was a bit predictable to know where things were generally heading. Still, there were instances that made my skin crawl and made me feel quite uncomfortable and paranoid - echoing the emotions the main characters are feeling too. Hee-jin was a likeable character despite her traumatic upbringing while Callie (our other POV) was difficult to like and engage with as a reader. While she is an important piece of the puzzle, I couldn't enjoy her chapters nearly as much as Hee-jin's.

If you're looking for a horror-leaning thriller with small narratives of social commentary weaved throughout, this book would be a good one to pick up and read.


Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher Severn House for allowing me an eARC to read and review.

[Flutter By Night · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maria Dong writes beautifully, immersing the reader in ambiguity, disorienting constructs of identity, in a system that’s rigged and frighteningly realist to its core.

While supernatural elements create a distinct fever dream quality, steeped in surrealism, Korean folklore bleeds through in the horrific transformative journey the FMC, Hee-Jin, undergoes. For in a tense, pressure test decision, she assumes Hee-Young, her sister’s identity. In a desperate bid to escape life as an undocumented immigrant in Korea, she wants nothing more than to attain some semblance of personal freedom—where better than America? What happens when one merely changes one cage for another? And that is the terrifying axiomatic question.

Aviary is rich in prose, unsettling and inventive in its exploration of body horror.

The story is mind-boggling and, at times, frankly a bit confusing. Intentionally so, I suspect? That said, I was left with a plethora of lingering questions. (There are so many things with zero explanation involving the magical realism and the house itself.)

I laude the tremendous characterization of the FMC and solid dialogue. Additionally, I was quite taken by the author’s compelling, unique voice. Note: The queer aspects of Aviary skim the surface.

Overall, I found this one to be an interested genre blending speculative horror read. I quite enjoyed some of the chilling bird imagery… tapped into the global-folklore-body horror-fantasy vein for sure!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.25

[Helen Haythornthwaite · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an intriguing read this was; I don’t think I’ve ever read anything like it before. It’s uncanny and baffling at times, but just so utterly captivating.

Hee-Jin, Hee-Young and their mother find themselves as homeless illegal immigrants in South Korea, through no fault of their own. An opportunity arises, after a tragic event, for Hee-Jin to seek a new life overseas. Thus begins Hee-Jin’s journey, which becomes shrouded in mystery as she finds herself at a rather strange, old house.

While, on the surface, it appears that Hee-Jin has found a new home, you just know, as you read on, that all is not as it seems. While much of the story is told from Hee-Jin’s POV, we also hear from Callie who is fighting her own demons.

There’s a dream-like quality to this story - it’s perplexing at times and horrific at others. It has been very cleverly written, and I liked the unusual aspect of it. Just when you think you know what’s going on, another puzzling element is added.

I also liked the inclusion of Korean superstitions and beliefs, and the history of Hee-Jin’s family. This helps explain some of Hee-Jin’s decisions and reactions, and I really empathised with her as all she wanted was a safe place to live.

There is so much more to this story but I’m going to stop there, as the enjoyment is in discovering it for yourself. 🧡


I was sent a proof copy by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

[Ashley - The Tattered Page · Rating 5 out of 5]

📖𝐸-𝒜𝑅𝒞 𝑅𝑒𝓋𝒾𝑒𝓌📖

𝒜𝓋𝒾𝒶𝓇𝓎 ʙʏ ᴍᴀʀɪᴀ ᴅᴏɴɢ

𝑅𝒶𝓉𝒾𝓃𝑔: 🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀 ᴏᴜᴛ ᴏғ 𝟻 ᴇɴᴄʜᴀɴᴛᴇᴅ ʀᴏsᴇs

✨ 𝐻𝑜𝑜𝓀✨

𝒜𝓃 𝓊𝓃𝒹𝑜𝒸𝓊𝓂𝑒𝓃𝓉𝑒𝒹 𝒾𝓂𝓂𝒾𝑔𝓇𝒶𝓃𝓉 𝓉𝒶𝓀𝑒𝓈 𝒽𝑒𝓇 𝒹𝑒𝒸𝑒𝒶𝓈𝑒𝒹 𝓈𝒾𝓈𝓉𝑒𝓇’𝓈 𝒾𝒹𝑒𝓃𝓉𝒾𝓉𝓎 𝓉𝑜 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝒰.𝒮., 𝑜𝓃𝓁𝓎 𝓉𝑜 𝓊𝓃𝒸𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓇 𝒶 𝓉𝑒𝓇𝓇𝒾𝒻𝓎𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓅𝓇𝑜𝑔𝓇𝒶𝓂 𝒻𝓊𝓁𝓁 𝑜𝒻 𝓈𝑒𝒸𝓇𝑒𝓉𝓈, 𝓂𝑜𝓃𝓈𝓉𝑒𝓇𝓈, 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒶 𝒹𝒶𝓇𝓀 𝓉𝓇𝒶𝓃𝓈𝒻𝑜𝓇𝓂𝒶𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝒷𝓁𝓊𝓇𝓈 𝒻𝒶𝓃𝓉𝒶𝓈𝓎, 𝒷𝑜𝒹𝓎 𝒽𝑜𝓇𝓇𝑜𝓇, 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒻𝑒𝓂𝒾𝓃𝒾𝓈𝓉 𝓇𝑒𝒸𝓀𝑜𝓃𝒾𝓃𝑔.

𝑅𝑒𝓋𝒾𝑒𝓌:

ʜᴜɢᴇ ᴛʜᴀɴᴋ ʏᴏᴜ ᴛᴏ sᴇᴠᴇʀɴ ʜᴏᴜsᴇ ғᴏʀ ɢɪғᴛɪɴɢ ᴍᴇ ᴛʜɪs ᴇ-ᴀʀᴄ!

𝐹𝒶𝒾𝓇𝓎𝓉𝒶𝓁𝑒𝓈 𝒶𝓇𝑒 𝒻𝑜𝓇 𝒸𝒽𝒾𝓁𝒹𝓇𝑒𝓃… 𝓊𝓃𝓉𝒾𝓁 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝓌𝒶𝓀𝑒 𝓊𝓅 𝒾𝓃 𝒶 𝓅𝓁𝒶𝒸𝑒 𝒻𝓊𝓁𝓁 𝑜𝒻 𝓂𝑜𝓃𝓈𝓉𝑒𝓇𝓈.

ᴍᴀʀɪᴀ ᴅᴏɴɢ sᴘɪɴs ᴀ ɢᴏʀɢᴇᴏᴜs, ᴄʀᴇᴇᴘʏ, ᴀɴᴅ ʜᴀᴜɴᴛɪɴɢʟʏ sᴜʀʀᴇᴀʟ sᴛᴏʀʏ. ʜᴇᴇ-ᴊɪɴ’s ᴊᴏᴜʀɴᴇʏ ɪs ᴠɪsᴄᴇʀᴀʟ: ɢʀɪᴇғ, ғᴇᴀʀ, ᴀɴᴅ sᴜʀᴠɪᴠᴀʟ ᴄᴏʟʟɪᴅᴇ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴅᴀʀᴋ ᴋᴏʀᴇᴀɴ ғᴏʟᴋʟᴏʀᴇ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ sʟᴏᴡ, ᴄʀᴇᴇᴘɪɴɢ ʜᴏʀʀᴏʀ ᴏғ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʀᴏɢʀᴀᴍ ᴋᴇᴇᴘs ʏᴏᴜ ᴏɴ ᴇᴅɢᴇ. ɪᴛ’s ᴇǫᴜᴀʟ ᴘᴀʀᴛs sᴜsᴘᴇɴsᴇ, ʙᴏᴅʏ ʜᴏʀʀᴏʀ, ᴀɴᴅ ǫᴜᴇᴇʀ ʟᴏɴɢɪɴɢ—ᴀ ᴛʀᴀɴsғᴏʀᴍᴀᴛɪᴏɴ sᴛᴏʀʏ ᴛʜᴀᴛ’s ʙᴏᴛʜ ᴘsʏᴄʜᴏʟᴏɢɪᴄᴀʟ ᴀɴᴅ ᴘʜʏsɪᴄᴀʟ. ᴛʜᴇ ʙᴏᴏᴋ ᴀʟsᴏ ᴛᴀᴄᴋʟᴇs ᴘᴏᴡᴇʀ, ᴇxᴘʟᴏɪᴛᴀᴛɪᴏɴ, ᴀɴᴅ ɪᴍᴘᴏssɪʙʟᴇ ᴄʜᴏɪᴄᴇs, ɢɪᴠɪɴɢ ɪᴛ ᴅᴇᴘᴛʜ ʙᴇʏᴏɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴛʜʀɪʟʟs.

𝒯𝓇𝑜𝓅𝑒𝓈 & 𝒱𝒾𝒷𝑒𝓈:
✨ᴅᴀʀᴋ sᴘᴇᴄᴜʟᴀᴛɪᴠᴇ sᴜsᴘᴇɴsᴇ
🕊️ ɢᴏᴛʜɪᴄ, ᴇᴇʀɪᴇ ᴠɪʙᴇs
✨ ǫᴜᴇᴇʀ ʟᴏɴɢɪɴɢ
🕊️ ғᴇᴍɪɴɪsᴛ ʙᴏᴅʏ ʜᴏʀʀᴏʀ
✨ ɪᴍᴍɪɢʀᴀɴᴛ ᴘᴇʀsᴘᴇᴄᴛɪᴠᴇ / ɪᴅᴇɴᴛɪᴛʏ ᴛʜᴇғᴛ
🕊️ ᴛʀᴀɴsғᴏʀᴍᴀᴛɪᴏɴ & sᴜʀᴠɪᴠᴀʟ
✨ ғᴏʟᴋʟᴏʀᴇ-ɪɴsᴘɪʀᴇᴅ ʜᴏʀʀᴏʀ

𝐹𝒾𝓃𝒶𝓁 𝓋𝑒𝓇𝒹𝒾𝒸𝓉:
𝒜𝓋𝒾𝒶𝓇𝓎 ʙʏ ᴍᴀʀɪᴀ ᴅᴏɴɢ ɪs ᴀ ᴅᴀʀᴋ, ᴛᴡɪsᴛᴇᴅ, ᴀɴᴅ ɢᴏʀɢᴇᴏᴜsʟʏ ʜᴀᴜɴᴛɪɴɢ ᴊᴏᴜʀɴᴇʏ ᴏғ sᴜʀᴠɪᴠᴀʟ, ɪᴅᴇɴᴛɪᴛʏ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʀᴀɴsғᴏʀᴍᴀᴛɪᴏɴ. ᴄʀᴇᴇᴘʏ, ǫᴜᴇᴇʀ, ᴀɴᴅ ɪᴍᴘᴏssɪʙʟᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴘᴜᴛ ᴅᴏᴡɴ.

ʜᴀᴘᴘʏ ʀᴇᴀᴅɪɴɢ!
𝒜𝓈𝒽𝓁𝑒𝓎
ʙᴏᴏᴋsᴛᴀɢʀᴀᴍ: @ᴛʜᴇᴛᴀᴛᴛᴇʀᴇᴅᴘᴀɢᴇ

[Lynda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This a really dark and creepy cross genre gothic speculative thriller with elements of fantasy, Korean folklore and horror. So where do I start! The main protagonist is North Korean Hee-Jin a 19 year old undocumented immigrant living in South Korea who is living with the fear of a knock on the door from the government/police. What eventually comes to her door is much worse; a dead bird like body with her eyes. Told from dual POV’s those of Hee-Jin and Callie the woman who originally set up the house where her ex husband now runs his art program

Briefly, Hee-Jin finds out that her younger sister Hee-Young died in suspicious circumstances in America where she was studying art. Taking her sister’s identity she travels to Pittsburgh where she joins the program her sister was attending. And this is when things get very dark, very very dark. The former manor house has been refurbished and house reacts to the emotions that Callie feels, with shaking walls and slamming doors.

To be honest I found some of this quite confusing and liked the Hee-Jin POV much more than the Callie one which didn’t seems to add much to the book. That’s probably just me. Despite the confusion it was a compelling read and quite shocking in parts - gave me the shivers! A translated literary read that will have you gripped and not always in a good way, I can’t get some of it out of my head. Thought provoking reading.

[Jerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have no doubt Aviary will be on many "2026 Favourites" lists, and for the first 25% of the book, I was confident it would be on mine as well. I thoroughly enjoyed my introduction to Hee-Jin and her struggles in Korea as an undocumented immigrant. The complexities of her family relationships and her fear of discovery/persecution were riveting. The discovery of her sister's corpse on her doorstep was a compelling (and disturbing) mystery that I was eager to dive into.

Unfortunately, once Hee-Jin makes her way to America and we're introduced to the other characters, things started to drag and my attention drifted. I would have loved to spend more time dealing with the difficulties of travelling internationally without proper documentation, entering America with limited English, the culture shock and terror Hee-Jin surely would have experienced, but this portion of the story is glossed over within a few paragraphs.

Overall, while ambitious and thought-provoking, the final product didn't resonate the way I wanted it to. I think I'll revisit this in the future to see if this was a case of 'right book, wrong timing.' The themes of exploitation, trauma, racism, cults, Korean folklore, and female revenge are ones I typically appreciate exploring, so I wouldn't be surprised if my opinion changes on a second reading.

Thank you to NetGalley and Severn House for the ARC!

[Nikki Kossaris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aviary follows Hee-Jin, who is already surviving on the margins, undocumented, careful, trying not to be seen. Then her sister shows up dead on her doorstep…except she’s not fully dead. That’s where the story really starts to unravel in the best, most unsettling way.

Hee-Jin takes her sister’s identity and runs, landing in this artist program in the U.S. that feels wrong from the beginning. Not in an obvious way, but in that quiet, creeping sense that something is being taken from you while everyone smiles and calls it opportunity.

This is very much body horror, but it’s not just for shock. It’s about control. About ownership. About what happens to women, especially women without power, when they become useful to the wrong people.

There’s a lot going on. Identity, immigration, exploitation, art, grief. Sometimes it feels a little crowded, like the story is trying to hold too many things at once. But at the same time, that chaos kind of works because Hee-Jin’s life is chaos. Nothing is stable. Nothing is safe.

What stuck with me most is the loneliness. Even when she’s surrounded by people, she’s completely alone. Watching, adapting, surviving.

This isn’t a comfortable read. It’s strange, tense, and a little suffocating in places. But it lingers. The kind of story that sits in your chest after you’re done.

[Kas Marek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to Severn House and NetGalley for the E-ARC.

There was a lot that was promising about this book and I enjoyed the overall story, however I did find a few issues with the book.

Part One instantly hooked me. I was intrigued throughout and don't think I ever really knew where the story was going from one point to another. At times, it moved a bit too slow, but still managed to entertain nonetheless.

About Callie - it felt so unnecessary to the story for her to have four different iterations of her name. Why did Shep change it from Callie to Caleigh? I felt like that wasn't explained. I understand that when talking to Hee-Jin, it sounded like Ca-lee, but it being spelt like that through all of her chapters was distracting. I think that goes for quite a few words in this book. I understood the pronunciation spelling when dialogue was happening because that's how she heard it, but why was the pronunciation spelling still present for her internal thoughts?

The ending felt a bit too rushed. I enjoyed the ending quite a bit but it was like a mad scramble to explain things and close any plot holes, but in that I couldn't fully digest some of the revelations.

Overall, this was an enjoyable 3-3.5 star book and I would recommend it to friends, but I would also caution them over some of the small issues I had.

[River · Rating 4 out of 5]

What isn't made clear from the synopsis of this book is that this is a story about TWO women. This book is split pov with a huge chunk of the book being about Callie, a mixed race Mexican woman who is the ex wife of the man running the art program Hee-Young and Hee-Jin both attend. While the two stories do interconnect heavily, Callie still very much has her own plot going on so I don't know why she is completely absent from the book summary.

Regardless of that, I really enjoyed the story as a whole and I really loved both characters. This book tackles a lot of incredibly dark subject matter and I think it is handled really well and does a great job of highlighting how dire the situation is for undocumented immigrants, especially young women. There are so many twists and turns in this book, and a lot of reveals that I didn't see coming.

This book won't be for everybody. The writing has a very dreamlike, unreal quality which makes sense for the plot of the story, and although I enjoyed it for the most part, it did make the events a little hard to follow at times. I lost track of the timeline with the back and forth pov a little and I don't feel like we ever truly learned the full story of what was happening, but again I can't criticize that too much because within the context of the story it does make sense and overall I really enjoyed it.

Thank you to the publisher for an early access copy!

[Kate Connell · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5

Cultural appropriation, fetishization of Asian culture, and sexual abuse through the lens of psychedelic body horror.

Hee-Jin waits in her Seoul apartment for the police to come and deport her to North Korea. She has no papers and no way to live safely in the world. But the knock that comes to the door isn't the police, instead it is her younger sister Hee-Young, who is supposed to be in America participating in an art program, not dead of what appears to be an overdose on her sister's doorstep. In her pocket is a plane ticket and US passport, and Americans can never tell the difference between Asian women anyways, so Hee-Jin decides to steal her sister's identity to figure out what really happened and hopefully find a way to safety.

She arrives in America and agrees to help the head of the art program, pretending to be her sister to keep the program going, also allowing her to investigate what really happened to Hee-Young. But as she becomes deeper involved in the program and its strange rituals, it seems there may be no way to get out of here safely, especially when no one is telling the truth.

Thank you to NetGalley for an eARC of this novel.

[Lauren Bayne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This feminist body horror thriller is captivating, terrifying, and thought-provoking. This highly-ambitious book explores issues of exploitation, Western perceptions of non-Western cultures, the vulnerabilities of young girls, and the impact of trauma on decision making. I found it hard to breathe the entire time I was reading.

Maybe this is stupid of me, but I wish there was more explanation of how the central metaphor came to be? In terms of animal-related body horror, this reminded me a lot of Sorry to Bother You, but that at least had an explanation for why that element existed. It kind of took me out of the story to not know WHY or HOW it was happening, but maybe I am just used to genre fiction. I also can't decide if I really appreciated having Callie's perspective or if I wish it was all Hee-Jin, I'll need to reflect more. Either way, I was still invested in the book and the unraveling of this house of horrors.

Note: I would consider this a 3.49, so basically a 3.5 but rounded down to a 3.

Thank you to NetGalley and Severn House for an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

[Jess Reads Horror · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley and Severn House for the ARC.

Hee Jin finds herself in a strange and dangerous situation. Her younger sister is dead, dumped at her doorstep. As an undocumented immigrant in South Korea, Hee Jin needs to decide what to do. She could call authorities and face whatever comes her way, or she could assume her sister’s identity and escape to the US. Maybe a new and better life awaits her.

Wow this was a very intense read. Lots of sensitive subjects being touched on, and very timely. The issue on citizenship, being undocumented, racism, rich men doing terrible things because they’re drunk on power and greed. Most of these issues are not new to us, it’s just disappointing we are still battling the same problems.

Hee Jin is a morally ambiguous character, but she does what she has to do to survive, and it’s not something I could ever begin to imagine. She’s tough, she’s resilient, but it comes with so many struggles. A very likable character for sure. Not gonna lie some parts did get a bit confusing but it did not affect the overall plot for me.

If you’re up for a timely, horrific, and rather heartbreaking read, pick this one up.