Teddy Bears Never Die

by Cho Yeeun

Genres: Horror
Pages: 304
Rating:

Synopsis:

The horrormance genre mash-up you've been waiting for - from the award-winning Korean author Cho Yeeun comes a new novel where a young girl and a teddy bear team up to enact revenge!

A poisoned city - A grieving daughter - A boy trapped in a bear's body.

When the fledgling coastal town of Yamu is rocked by a mass-poisoning attack at The Seaview Parc, the luxury high-rise meant to revitalise the city, Hwayoung is one of many who lost family members. Except, she has never believed that her mother was poisoned. Now, fuelled by grief and a desire for revenge, Hwayoung spends her time hustling to save every penny and bring those responsible to justice.

Across town, Doha wakes up in a teddy bear and realizes something sinister has taken his body. When fate brings Hwayoung and Doha together, the two team up for a revenge quest that will shake the city's shiny façade to its rotten core.

This time, revenge is not just personal - it's supernatural.

I picked up Cho Yeeun’s Teddy Bears Never Die thanks to other bloggers’ reviews, and was very curious whether I’d find it easier to get oriented to the world given I’ve read a few other books/series in translation from Korean (like Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, A Magical Girl Retires, Walking Practice, Solo Leveling — a mix of manhwa and novels) so there’s a bit of cultural familiarity there. And yep, that did help: some of the locations were familiar, some of the untranslated words (like “gosiwon”) were ones I knew, and I didn’t get too tangled up with the names.

It is, of course, still a really weird book, since one central point is that one of the characters spends most of the book possessing a teddy bear. The cover is really striking, showing him as being huge, but that’s not a literal rendition — he’s just a normal-sized bear that the other main character can hold in her arms, though he does on occasion wield a knife.

There are horror elements, but the main feel is of being something of a thriller, with tense scenes of Hwayoung needing to escape being knifed by a perfectly ordinary non-possessed man, get away from the guy exploiting her and trying to sell her, etc. I don’t know how realistic the portrayal of the poverty and crime Hwayoung got mired in is, but it felt like a gritty crime drama at that point.

That said, some of the horror elements are pretty dang creepy, like the ghost of “Grandma”, the ghost-composite that goes after the assassin, and of course, a lot of the stuff to do with Dohyun’s father.

Overall, I enjoyed it quite a lot. The translation read pretty well for me, and I enjoyed Doha and Hwayoung’s journey, and their strained but realistic friendship. The things they’ve gone through are well-evoked; I think sometimes the narrative feels a little on the simplistic side, fairly exterior to the characters, but it still does a good job of making it clear what they’re feeling (at least to my mind!) and thinking, and the intense twisted feelings that Dohyun’s father feels are quite compelling, even while they’re repellent.

I did also like that we get a translator’s note! I’ve noticed that in a few Korean novels (less the webnovel type but more stuff like this and A Magical Girl Retires), and I enjoy reading a bit about the translation experience.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)