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the complete review - fiction

Teddy Bears Never Die

by
Cho Yeeun

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B : a wild and busy ride

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "Yeeun subjects her characters to a brisk succession of wild, often violent escapades involving a contract killer, a crooked politician, demons from the afterlife, and more. The result is suspenseful, scary, and dizzyingly fun." - Publishers Weekly

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       When the story-proper begins in Teddy Bears Never Die (there's a brief Prologue setting things up), seventeen-year-old Hwang Hwayoung's carefully planned life unravels in fast order: she loses her fast-food job (she forged some documents to pass for older than she was when she applied for the job two years earlier) as well as her side-hustle, and her creepy landlord, Youngjin, threatens to raise her rent if she won't participate in a 'fishing'-scam he runs (with her to act as bait). Life wasn't easy in the first place -- she shares her bare-minimum living-space at the Rainbow Apartments ("the Cesspool of Yamu") with ten or so other equally desperate youngsters -- but she has a plan and a goal, and she's been working determinedly towards it, saving up to reach her target of twenty million won; she's almost one-fifth of the way there when she loses her two sources of income.
       She is saving up because she needs help: she want revenge, for the death of her mother, killed in a random killing spree three years earlier that saw nine people killed and twelve left in critical condition, poisoned by rice cakes. She believes that with twenty million she will be able to hire the help she needs to exact revenge.
       When Hwayoung had been thirteen there had been a 'Happy Smile Bear'-craze, and Hwayoung had earned pocket money after school stitching eyes onto the popular plush toys. The craze wore itself out soon enough -- but, as her life spirals out of control, she comes across one in an alley and takes it with her.
       This bear turns out not to be a simple stuffed animal; also stuffed inside -- and desperate to get out -- is teenage Han Doha. He is the nephew of Han Junghyuk -- "the Han family's crown jewel", the Hans being: "one of the most prominent old-money families in Yamu". Among other things, Junghyuk had served as mayor of Yamu, and was instrumental in its redevelopment-makeover. It is also Junghyuk in whose home Hwayoung's mother worked as housekeeper. And among those who also died that terrible day were Junghyuk's younger brother and his sister in law (Doha's parents) and the light of Junghyuk's life, his own son, Dohyun; after Dohyun's death Junghyuk took in the boy's cousin, Doha, but he was never an adequate substitute .....
       The teddy bear has somewhat limited capacities, but even at his size he quickly proves helpful to Hwayoung in getting out of some very bad situations. Nevertheless, there are also disappointments along the way, as Hwayoung discovers that even with twenty million won in her hands revenge is not so easily bought (and that the person she thought could help her with this problem has some deadly ideas of her own). But when hiring help doesn't pan out Hwayoung continues to plot revenge on her own, with her new, stuffed sidekick.
       Matters are a bit complicated by the fact that Doha does not immediately identify who he is -- in fact, his and Hwayoung's path had crossed before -- but ultimately they do work together, and both get what they want.
       Hwayoung was pretty sure that the official story about her mother's death was fishy -- mom couldn't stand rice cakes, poisoned or otherwise, and so it seemed unimaginable that she had eaten any -- but even she (and the reader) had no idea of the extent of the horror surrounding the events of that day and its aftereffects. As Hwayoung notes -- long before she even knows the half of it ... --: "My god, this is some weird shit I got myself into".
       Spirits of various sorts -- generally dark and darker -- and kinds of possession (so also of a human in teddy-bear form), a very, very desperate father with far too many resources at his disposal (and no ethics), as well as piles and piles of dead people figure in what is at heart a supernatural tale. Both Hwayoung and Doha's experiences, together and separately, include quite a colorful variety of incidents, with several messy, narrow misses -- and a whole lot of exposure to some very dark stuff.
       It's very much a light pop, pulp read, creatively enough imagined -- a bit extreme, but the silliness of just how wild much of what happens here is can readily be taken as part of the fun. Readers picking up a novel featuring a talking, possessed teddy bear (that can wield a hatchet, if the situation calls for it) presumably don't insist too strongly on realism, and there is enough to this whole construction -- not least some unexpected turns along the way -- to make for a decent, twisty thriller

- M.A.Orthofer, 25 March 2026

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Links:

• Orbit publicity page
• Wildfire publicity page
• Safehouse publicity page

• Publishers Weekly

• See Index of Korean literature

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About the Author:

       South Korean author Cho Yeeun (조예은) was born in 1993.

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© 2026 the complete review

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