The Suffering by Rin Chupeco

The Suffering by Rin Chupeco - 320 pages

This is the sequel to The Girl from the Well.  Okiku and Tark have reached an understanding where the vengeful spirit and the boy can coexist.  But stresses in Tark's life at school bring out the worst in both of them and it brings another student to harm.  A friend of theirs back in Japan led an expedition into the so called "Suicide Forest" and is missing so Okiku and Tark leave to go and try and find their friend.  They stumble into a mystery that blends the present and past in terrifying ways.

This book wasn't as good as The Girl from the Well.  It suffers some from heavy handed exposition where a lot of the background is told to the reader by a character who wanders through just for that reason and nothing more.  The violence in this teen series is pretty strong so it might be an issue for younger teens.   

The Girl from the Well by Rin Chupeco

The Girl from the Well by Rin Chupeco - 304 pages

As you can guess from the cover and the tag line "I am where dead children go" this teen book is pretty creepy. Okiku is a lonely spirit of a young Japanese girl who has been roaming the earth for centuries wreaking vengeance on those who murder children.  She frees the souls of their victims so they can move on to the next phase of existence.  Her vengeance takes her to the town of Tark, a young moody boy with intricate tattoos that have a mind of their own.  Okiku sees the evil trapped within the boy and makes it her mission to free him from it but there is a terrible risk he might die in the process. 

This book reads like a movie from The Ring series at times with how the action is described.  It's not for the faint of heart.  It goes into a lot of Japanese culture that was very interesting.