Mina

I think I may have found this book on some "unhinged female characters" list. If I didn't, well, it surely belongs there. Despite being called Mina, that isn't the main character of this book. Nor is she the main subject the book is based around on. No, Mina, is the reason why the main character, Crystal, went mad, more or less. Well, it isn't really Mina, it's more that the main character is already an insane sociopath, the kind that is born from South Korea's highly competitive, caricaturishly capitalist society, that prioritizes looks and status above all else. She kind of serves as a vessel for all of that which is wrong, and she regurgitates the tenets that society taught her back at us. The writing is very snappy, kind of like watching a quick cut montage. At first I found the switching povs very confusing, but then by like 20% of the book the pov settles on a single character and stays mostly consistent throughout. Sometimes it was hard to tell whether there's an omniscient narrator or whether Crystal is expressing her own thoughts but you get used to it. It's a very short book, I basically read it in one afternoon. One important warning though, there's a scene where a kitten is tortured and killed and while not as in-detail as the one in The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea it's still pretty drawn out and disturbing to read.

Crystal was rotten through and through, so if you like books with actually evil protagonists you might like this. The ending is chilling, and I took it as a warning that tells us what the future holds if those that prevail and dominate are people like Crystal and her male counterpart.