hisghoulfriday's reviews
770 reviews

This was a fantastic psychological thriller! It follows the story of two secondary school teachers in Hong Kong who are forced to switch from teaching in Cantonese to Mandarin or else they’re going to get fired.

Despite that the main characters are unlikeable, I was so stressed for both of them. The book was just so well written, and I found it difficult to put down. There was lots of office drama and bullying going on, and the characters were so vivid.

What even was this? The eeriness I felt in the first book was gone.

There was less of the sappy romance plot that happened in book one, which I was happy with, but this book is so preachy. There was a bit of a religious tone in the Hallowed Ones but it was nowhere near as prevalent as it was in this book. Like, at one part the main character, Katie, meets a pastor, and then she gets bitten by a snake. Everyone’s freaking out and the pastor basically says, in order for her to survive she needs to be filled with the Holy Spirit, so he tells everyone to pray. So they pray away the snake venom. What?! There’s also tons of info dumping about mythology and Christianity that just slows the story down.

The characters still didn’t feel fleshed out, which is what I was really hoping for in the second book.

I’d recommend just skipping this one if you’ve already read the first one.

What a cliffhanger! This was an amazingly creepy slow-burn manga that was incredibly hard to put down. I loved how beautiful and eerie the artwork was, and I’m really intrigued to see where Vol. 2 goes!