This book is a mind fuck in the best possible way. I'm so glad I finally got myself organised and read it.

THE GOOD SON is a very good thriller/mystery. (The fact that it's based on a true story is interesting, too.)
The story follows Yu-jin, who wakes up to find his mother brutally killed one morning. Prone to seizures his entire life, he has no idea how she died, or if he might be involved. The novel unfolds over the course of three frantic and intense days; interspersed by flashbacks that give us a greater understanding of Yu-jin, his mother and their relationship.

Well-written, gripping, and twisty. I enjoyed it.

The good son is a story told by Yu-Jin, who wakes up covered in blood and not knowing why. The story is his journey into discovering who he is and learning his family secrets that help him to discover why his life has turned out how it has.
I enjoyed this book and did not expect the book to end the way it did but could see how everything came together

The Good Son of the title wakes to find himself in a nightmare situation, one where he has no recollection of what happened and that only looks worse with every minute he delays reporting it.

You-jeong Jeong positions us inside the head of her main character from the instant the metallic tang of blood wakes Yu-jin up. We walk the scene of the crime with him, making each discovery as he does, and all the while listening to his inner monologue. And it’s this which made The Good Son so interesting for me. I had to know how he was going to piece together what had happened the night before but also how hiding the evidence and going the investigation alone was going to pan out for him.

We soon find out the cause of Yu-jin’s confusion and realise that he’s not going to be a reliable narrator. Not that he hides this fact. Early on in the book, he tells us that

Honesty is neither my strong suit nor something I aspire to

This, together with his erratic reasoning and behaviour upon discovering his mother’s body, certainly don’t seem to correspond with that expected of a diligent student waiting for law school entrance exam results. Or someone with the focus he once must have possessed to become a champion swimmer.

Yu-jin’s task is complicated by the flashbacks he experiences, which are by their very nature fragmentary. Likewise, entries from his mother’s journal at first appear to be more of an uncomfortable invasion of privacy than in any way helpful.

I was Mother’s only son. That was the rule.

Yet there are always exceptions to the rule and that’s also the case here. There was another son who died when Yu-jin was only nine years old and starting to swim competitively; and there’s now a cuckoo in the nest in the form of his former childhood friend now adoptive brother, Hae-jin, who’s on his way home the morning of Yu-jin’s macabre discovery.

Yu-jin’s feeling of superiority is also partly responsible for backing him more and more into a corner. It’s not something he ever felt towards his mother or his Auntie though. The latter, who works as a psychiatrist and director of Future Pediatric Clinic, is going to be problematic for him when she checks in.

Apart from his late night running, most of the action in The Good Son is more psychological than physical. It’s Yu-jin’s mind which is working overtime to try and find the answers before any one or a combination of the authorities, his adoptive brother or his Auntie discover that his mother’s out of character trip is bogus and actually covering up something far more macabre.

I enjoyed the slow reveal of the story of the night before, and how cleverly You-jeong Jeong maintains the tension. I could have done with stopping for some sugar-filled pancakes at Yongi’s street stall to help deal with that, but only if it had been during daylight hours. Yu-jin’s mind is an absorbing if unsettling place to inhabit and I hope to read more from this author once it becomes available in translation.

Yu-Jin awakes one morning to find himself covered in blood. Unable to remember how he arrived in this state he slowly works his way through the house towards a devastating discovery as his memories slowly return.

The less you know about this book before reading it the better. Yu-Jin is one of fiction’s classic unreliable narrators. His Mother and Auntie are dominant figures in his life but as Yu-Jin’s story slowly unfolds my perceptions certainly changed a few times. Once a star swimmer, Yu-Jin suffers from seizures and blackouts and is forced to give up the sport he so loves. There’s a definite drip drip effect to the revelations throughout the story that really add to the retention and the mystery. It’s a real skill to pull off a book like this, it would have definitely suffered if the author had revealed too much too quickly and the pacing is superbly handled. There’s plenty of flashbacks and they’re interspersed cleverly throughout the story. Yu-Jin’s family history is as complicated as it is tragic and rather being a story of heroes and villains it feels like a tale of what could have been. This is a book that’s as sad as it is gripping, it’s not your average thriller and it’s all the better for it. Highly recommended.

I received a ARC from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for a fair review.

The more I think about this book the more I don’t like it and I am tired, so tired.

Listen, I am down for an unreliable narrator. But too often when it comes to male unreliable narrators it just reminds me that most men in generally are unreliable narrators, because the sad thing is so many men think just like You-Jin and it’s terrifying.

And boy oh boy did the thoughts of this guy have so many fucking red flags and he ignored all of them and he’s not alone in this.

Some guys even share their creepy thoughts aloud and other men don’t fucking correct them because that would be uncomfortable. Not as uncomfortable as it is to be the victim on the other side of these thoughts but still, it would be improper social etiquette.

Or worse still, they think the men around them also think these things and are just glad someone else said it so they can gauge other people’s reactions only to realise that there isn’t one.

Because if you’re not admatly declaring your disgust in these types of thoughts, you are perpetuating and validating these thoughts.

There’s a point where the main character is following a woman with the intent to scare her and he has the audacity to label the drunk guy also following her and trying to drunkenly serrande her as the asshole in this situation as if he lives on some higher moral ground, instead of being a downright monster.

That guy is an absolute asshole but you can't go around stalking women because you get off on fear and then label someone whos actions are fucking mild compared to your special brand of fucked upness, an asshole.

I just—I’m so tired of male authors thinking they have something special to offer the genre with these ‘unreliable narrators’ and their ‘uncommon’ way of thinking as if it’s not the same fucking rationale as at least thousands of men, if not millions. And if you don’t believe me that it’s that fucking common go and look up rape statistics. Because there is your fucking proof.

Your special brand of fuckedupness isn’t so fucking special, it’s actually maddeningly mediocre.

Hope you enjoyed my rant in lieu of a review, and if you didn’t then I’m sorry this was all I had to give.

Maybe the tense thriller feel of this book got lost in translation.
The story itself was good but it rambled and at times I got bored. Little disappointing.

This is a very dark story but brilliant if you love this genre.
I found the writing style very easy to read.

I thought that maybe I’d made a mistake in requesting The Good Son from NetGalley when I started reading it. And at 23% I was ready to abandon it – I was tired of reading about Yu-jin trying to get rid of all the blood in the apartment and on himself after he discovered his mother lying in a pool of blood – it was so repetitive and slow going. So I did something that I very rarely do and went to the end of the book to see if it was like that all the way through – and as it looked as though it wasn’t, I carried on reading.

This is a dark book, but although there is a lot of blood around at the start it isn’t actually a gory, blood and guts story. It’s a psychological did-he-do-it murder mystery. It’s tense and puzzling as Yu-jin tries to uncover what happened, at first unable to remember the events of the night before the murder. It’s written totally from Yu-jin’s perspective, so for most of the book it was as though I was reading his mind – and it’s a very strange, mixed up mind. He has difficulty with honesty and admits that he tells more lies than other people, which means that he can tell any kind of story in a believable way, and for a large part of this book I was willing to believe him, or to think the murder was all in his mind and that his mother wasn’t dead.

For years he had been taking pills which his mother told him were to control his epilepsy but he didn’t like the side effects so he had stopped taking them without telling his mother. Now he’s worried about having seizures and the blank spots in his memory are confusing him. As more of his past life is revealed in flashbacks I began to revise my opinion of him and wondered if he could have killed his mother. When he was nine his father and older brother had died in tragic circumstances that are only revealed later on in the book and even then there are different versions of what actually happened. It’s an intricate plot and just as soon as I thought I could see where it was going I realised that I’d been hoodwinked.

The book is set in South Korea, mainly in Incheon, a city south of Seoul but the main focus is on this dysfunctional family and their relationships. I’m glad I didn’t give up on the book at 23% as after that point the story picked up pace and it held my interest to the end. But it is certainly a dark and unsettling character study of a psychopath.

My thanks to the publishers, Little, Brown Book Group, for my review copy via NetGalley.

This book was a really enjoyable read! It's one of those that you should go into not knowing much, since it takes you by surprise. The intrigue and mystery surrounding Yu-jin really draws you in. He is a troubled young man who's story is filled with suspense. I couldn't get enough!

Highly recommended!

I've read around 20% of this one and am now abandoning it. It's well enough written, but too much blood, too lovingly described, for my taste. The story isn't grabbing my attention - the narrator is so unlikeable I don't care whether he did it or not. I'm afraid I'm the wrong reader for this - gore-fests have never been my kind of thing. Trying to freak readers out with lengthy descriptions of blood is a very lazy way of trying to provoke a reaction, in my opinion. Maybe he gets out of the blood-soaked rooms eventually, but having spent a fifth of the book with him describing them, I've had more than enough.

Since I'm abandoning it at an early stage, I won't be posting a review online.

This is unlike any thriller I have read before.

I’m sure you, like me, think you know what you’re in for with this book based on the synopsis. You’re probably wrong.

You-jeong Jeong successfully has you doubting everything you think you know about the story, leaving you are confused as Yu-jin. It really helps pull you into the story, and I came away from it feeling wrong footed everytime I read it.

If you’re a fan of thrillers I’d definitely pick this up. It’s and incredibly unique read. I will call out though that this is a dark novel, so if that’s not your thing I’d give this a miss.

I really hope more of You-jeong Jeong’s work gets translated. I’d love to see what else she comes up with!

I had high hopes for this translated thriller but The Good Son missed the mark completely for me. This tale unravels the mind of a psychopath following the murder of his Mother. I wanted to be enthralled by this peek behind the curtain of a murderer and what lead him to commit this crime but instead it was a run of the mill, paint by numbers thriller. It hasn't added anything to the genre for me. Disappointing.

The Good Son is sort of familiar in concept if you like this kind of genre (crime) but well executed. The plot drags a little and is somewhat predictable but the prose keeps you going, slowly but slowly dragging you into the atmosphere.

I had read so many glowing reviews of this book so I was looking forward to reading it. I really struggled to get into it, the story was great but I think the constant jumping around in time was just too much for me. Just not for me I am afraid.

It is a gruesome story of Yi Jin who wakes to find himself covered in blood and his mother dead. He has no recollection of what has happened. Then he starts to hear of young women in his area being murdered and going missing so he tries to figure out what is happening. It is based on a true story which is scary in itself.

Thanks to Little Brown Book Group and NetGalley for the copy of this book to read. All opinions are my own and are in no way biased

Well, this was quite a read! It begins with a young man, the protagonist Yu-Jin, waking up in his room covered in blood, and with only vague memories of what happened the night before. He makes his way downstairs to discover…..and that’s all I’m going to say about what he discovers and what happens next, as this is really a book where the less the reader knows before starting it, the better. Too many reviews, in my opinion, give too much away, and for me the whole pleasure of this compelling Korean novel is the gradual build-up of relevant detail, the constant drip-feed of information about Yu-Jin, his past, his present, his actions and most of all his mind. An unreliable narrator par excellence, it’s his point of view we get throughout as he talks to himself, questions himself constantly, lets fall clues about himself. I found this an excellent read, really absorbing and enjoyable. It’s well-plotted, well-paced and well-constructed, with the frequent flashbacks seamlessly integrated into the narrative, and a convincing portrait of an unbalanced mind.

Thankyou to NetGalley, Little, Brown Book Group UK and You-jeong Jeong for the opportunity to read an advanced readers copy of The Good Son.
At the beginning of the book, I thought I was reading a psychological thriller. One that had me engrossed from the very beginning. Then I remembered that this book was based on a true story. My blood went cold.
OMG, what a story. I had to read this book in one sitting. I had to know what really happened. And I certainly was not disappointed. I would definitely recommend this book for anyone who enjoys a good psychological thriller/ true crime novel.

I have read quite a few books with unreliable narrators, and this tale ranks pretty high up on the list of particularly good ones.
We meet Yu-jin as he is trying to figure out why his mother is dead and too much evidence seems to be pointing in his direction. He keeps getting some parts of his memory of the night before back but as he is trying to assimilate the situation, more players stir up trouble. Among them feature police,his brother and his Auntie. We get to hear a lot of his thoughts and the way his mind is trying to make sense of the ongoing events. The twists and the some of the revelations took me by complete surprise. I would say the translator did a very good job and none of the dialogues seem to out-of-place in the book. I felt like I could understand the scenario our 'good son' was painting for us. I think the pacing of the story is its highlight, as it gives us ample time to create very fixed notions in our heads while keeping us blind from the actual story. I am sure there are people out there who might figure the truth out, but for their own enjoyment (though the word 'enjoyment' seems a little unseemly to use in this context) I hope they do not.

While this book began very well and was certainly interesting enough for me to finish, I did not find that it lived up to the hype I had been expecting. I found the method of delivery quite awkward. It reminded me of both The Hangover and Memento (but not in any good way), due to our character not being able to remember anything from the previous evening and the method used to "solve" the missing information.
I found the characters to be quite bland and didn't really feel any kind of warmth towards any of them, which for me is quite important.
So, while I was intrigued enough to finish the book, I'm still not quite sure how much I enjoyed it. Although I don't like to use the term, I guess it just wasn't for me.

Yu-jin wakes up one morning to find himself covered in blood and he has no memory of why. He sees that his home is blood-splattered and as he investigates he finds the body of his mother dead with her throat cut. Yu-jin is scared as he has had a blackout caused by him stopping taking his medication. As relatives start to express concern about his mother Yu-jin decides to clean up but on finding his mother’s journal his memory starts to come back and he realises that his medication is hiding more than epilepsy.

This is a short and very sharp book which completely grips the reader. The start suggests that Yu-jin has been set up and he appears a victim but as the plot progresses the reader realises that there is more to Yu-jin than first appears. The tone shifts incrementally as the horror increases and I found myself hooked to find out what happens next. It’s obvious but deliciously macabre. The writing is so spare I can forgive the glaring holes in the narrative because the book is just brilliant.