Holy Boy - by Lee Heejoo (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Four obsessed women kidnap a K-Pop idol with unexpected and devastating results in this chilling, thought-provoking literary thriller that blends the dark impulsions of Butter with the ratcheting tension of Stephen King's Misery.

Four wildly different women are consumed by Yosep, a dreamy twenty-one-year-old K-pop idol known as "the boy."

Ahna, a woman in her forties, first sought the company of younger men to quell the loneliness she experienced accompanying her husband on his trips abroad. When an affluent friend introduces her to the boy and she sees him on television, Ahna joins his cultish fandom. She soon bonds with Mihee, a beautiful, socially isolated woman in her twenties, who also worships the boy, and they eventually meet two other acolytes: Nami, a young shaman, and Heeae, who worked as a maid for Ahna's family and is Yosep's birth mother. Heeae gave her son up for adoption to ensure him a better life but yearns to be reunited.

Fierce and unapologetic, each woman has her own reason for wanting Yosep--a yawning desperation that spawns a dangerous plan. After taking the young singer hostage at a mansion in the mountains of South Korea's Gangwon Province, Ahna, Yosep, Mihee, Nami, and Heeae will go to extreme lengths to keep him there, no matter how coercive--or murderous--the means. But the fervency that united this formidable team begins to fracture them, igniting a holy war over that sets each woman against the other. Who will emerge the victor? And just how far will she go to win the boy for herself?

A probing, page-turning psychological horror novel as thrilling as a rollercoaster ride, told in spine-tingling prose, Holy Boy is a subversive, intricately plotted novel that explores the perils of objectification, the dark undercurrents of female desire, and the precarity of love.

Translated from the Korean by Joheun Lee

Review Quotes

Lee [Heejoo] writes a captivating psychological thriller about how extreme parasocial relationships can turn violent. This unique read will fly off shelves. - Nicole Gaudier Alemañy, Library Journal

"[Lee Heejoo's] prose wields Angela Carter's baroque Gothic sensuality and Ottessa Moshfegh's deadpan brutality. The result is a page-turning thriller you devour in one feverish sitting, then find yourself turning over in your head for days." - Yooj Chun, Words Without Borders