This felt like sooooooo much to be shoved into book of this size. Maybe I'm missing something in translation, but overall the story felt very erratic and messy to me. The themes bounce around from sexual harassment, tourism and travel culture, the exploitation of Mui, and the fascination people have with disasters, and I felt none of them were tied together in a way that evoked much feeling beyond "Yeah, this stuff is all bad". The pacing is poor and goes from dragging out a day or a scene to several pages to skimming weeks in a sentence. I thought Yona was a fine character at times, but honestly she's just robbed of most of her agency throughout the book and is constantly being played by others; I can't for the life of me understand why this book is being sold as a story with "fierce feminist sensibility". It's just not there. The ending only heightened my dissatisfaction in this respect.
All in all, it's a Will Not Recommend from me.

( )

Definitely a book I bought because I saw it all over bookstagram and my curiosity won me over. This ia book that starts off off-kilter and just gets odder -- Yona works at a travel agency that specializes in sending people to sites of recent disasters -- volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc. But what happens when a destination doesn't look like a disaster anymore? And what if the locals have come to depend on that tourism income?

A thriller that delves into the weird exploitations of the tourism industry, our complicated relationships to disasters, harassment in the workplace, with a mix of mounting dread and surreal shifts in plot.

One of those books I think would be better the less you know going in. ( )

The first part of the book is okay, if a tad morbid, and the narrator isn't particularly appealing, but the story's intriguing, if unlikely. I might have given three stars if the whole book was similar, continuing the story in a positive way.

But the second half is horrifying, so appalling in places that I could hardly believe I was reading correctly what happened. It's supposedly satirical - and I hope the idea of people gloating over disaster areas is a kind of dark satire - but there is nothing remotely amusing in the book. One reviewer calls it a 'blackly comic caper' - I have no clue how they found anything comic in this novel.

I read it for our local book group, and will be very interested to know what others thought. I certainly would not recommend it.

Longer review here: https://suesbookreviews.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-disaster-tourist-by-yun-ko-eun.... ( )

3.5 rounded up to 4 ( )

Title: The Disaster Tourist
Author: Yun Ko-eun
Publisher: Counterpoint Press
Reviewed By: Arlena Dean
Rating: Four
Review:

"The Disaster Tourist" by Yn Ko-eun

My Speculation:

The title says it all "The Disaster Tourist," as this author delivers to the readers one unique story.
We find that a travel agency employee will get involved and stuck in quite a disaster travel zone [Mui]. I will say that the plot to the story was creative and will keep you turning the pages; however, the story kind of left me wondering what in the world is happening? After being sexually assaulted by her boss at work [The Jungle, a Korean tourism Company] and then as punishment sent to a disaster resort, will this heroine Yona be able to make it out of there alive? Why had Yona agreed to go to this remote island of Mui? Well, it was to be her 'job to experience this vacation as a tourist and then see whether it's worth this company's renewing their contract.' But, Yona didn't know that she would be drawn into quite a twisted plot to sustain this island, at all cost.

I will say there is so much going on that some of the parts of the story were a little hard for me to grasp; however, this was quite an original story that was unlike any other books I have ever read. ( )