As much as I have formed a loving bond with Tark's and Okiku's world, the prospect of Rin Chupeco writing another sequel displeases me. I don't want another Ghostbusters ripoff; thank you very much. Hence I have to kiss the funny seventeen-year-old guy goodbye and his succinct ghost girlfriend. 
 In this companion to The Girl from the Well, Tark and Okiku take us to the dark, mysterious Japanese wilderness, Aokigahara--an actual place popularly dubbed as the "suicide forest." It is what the name suggests: a forest where people set foot in to self-murder themselves. The Suffering picked up the growing popularity of the place and gave it a new tale that would send chills up one's spine. 
 Rin Chupeco, I am pleased to observe again (I'm quite making a lot observations of her lately, a sign I extensively adore the lady), is all for the twisting of an existing material. In The Girl from the Well, she extracted the long-haired ghost from The Ring and The Grudge, gave her a cute name, and set her down on a YA paranormal novel. It worked--or more exactly, Chupeco made it work. In The Suffering, Chupeco, having been bored out of her wits one restless night, probably looked up "weirdest places in the world" on Google, and all of a sudden, she was into Aokigahara, thinking how it would be sick to write a companion novel to TGFTW with this content. If Rin Chupeco isn't the most resourceful novelist today, I don't know who is. 
 Not only is she good with renovation of ideas, but she is also an astounding researcher. The amount of details in the story is enough to make other writers look like they've got fat asses. She reminds me of James Rollins' painstaking research that he devotes upon writing his adventure novels. Come to think of it: The Suffering has a tiny hint of feel similar to Rollins' Amazonia, but not nearly as good enough, unfortunately. Although contrasts are unnecessary in this situation, so I need to stop. 
 I will miss their world, but I'm glad it's over, just the same. I finally gave this one five stars because it was better-written than its predecessor. The recurrent enjambments weren't entirely gone, but at least they ran lesser than before. 
 P.S. I know another resourceful novelist: that British lady who wrote that fan fiction that eventually saw print when people noticed there was a hot guy in it who is naked almost all of the time and, um, filthy rich.