Who Did I End Up Killing

After reading The Seat of the Flamingo, I picked up this book with high expectations for author Jeong Hae-yeon.
To put it bluntly, those expectations only made the disappointment worse.

The culprit was obvious from the very beginning.
Rather than foreshadowing, it gave away too much — practically handing the reader the answer — and the ending was already visible before even reaching the halfway point.
In a mystery novel, the moment a reader feels certain about the culprit, the remaining pages become nothing more than a confirmation exercise.

The title is the biggest letdown.
Who Did I End Up Killing — this question could have gone far beyond simply identifying a killer, posing a weighty inquiry into complicity, silence, and moral bystander guilt.
Yet the novel handles that question far too lightly and moves on.
It never manages to carry the weight its title promises.

The characters are equally disappointing.
Each one carries the burden of guilt and the weight of being a bystander, yet their inner conflicts never dig deep enough — they only skim the surface.
Their pain needed to be convincing before the title's question could truly land.

A twist isn't necessary.
But this work ends feeling like it has neither a twist nor any lingering resonance — it just stops.
It's hard to believe it's by the same author as The Seat of the Flamingo.