Book: I Believe in a Thing Called Love by Maurene GooGenre: YA contemporary romance
Rating:★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
I've had this book on my radar for quite some time being as that it features Kdramas. Then one day the librarian at work brought it to me and said, you should read this. So finally I had my chance!
It's pretty much what I expected. Goofy and fun and fluffy. It's about a Korean American girl who's Korean dad is very much into kdramas. She thinks they are silly and stupid (as most people do of course!) and never joins in his binges and marathons.
Meanwhile a new kid shows up at school and she is determined to win him over. Because he's gorgeous and intriguing and all the good stuff. But she has a problem with flirting, which is that it never works out. She fails miserably.
So one day she happens to actually pay attention to her dad's shows and ends up binging the whole drama with him and bam, she realizes.... the show has a formula she can follow to get a guy. So she makes a list and sets out to put her plan into practice.
Sadly, I can't remember the list and the book is already back at the library. But it was stuff like, find out about his mysterious past, be a damsel in distress, reveal your vulnerabilities, get caught in a love triangle, have a sad back story. Yes... it's all there. (Oh, I found the list online. Here you go.)
I found the list interesting since I would agree with some of it and not so much others. But it was fun to watch our girl try to go through the list and "make" it all happen. Of course, she didn't really NEED the list as it would have all happened without it, since the two fall in love quite nicely on their own. It's a fun romance and on the surface fluffy, but there is still the hard things they all have to deal with. (Sad back story and all!)
I loved the characters, all fun and quickly. The dad was especially enjoyable and I could totally picture him perfectly!
I also loved that the author included a list of kdramas to watch for those just getting going on this adventure and willing to give them a try and fall down the rabbit hole! She had them all listed by genre and category which was awesome. I've watched maybe half of the ones suggested. It was fun to see many of my favorites on the list. I should have saved that list too to fit in some of the other suggestions, but my "to watch list" is out of control already!
Anyway, of course I totally enjoyed this book that mashed up my favorite things... kdrama, korean culture and YA romance! :)
Even though you only gave it 3 stars, I still want to read this, lol. :)
ReplyDeleteJenni: Three stars because the writing was just...okay. And there were unnecessary curse words that bugged me. So in the end, I liked it, but I wasn't like, oh my gosh it's so good!!! Yeah.
DeleteHmm
ReplyDeleteI think the story line of this one sounds cute. I’ve only seen one drama but I read your reviews and I think there’s definitely some tropes that they follow. But that’s just me.
ReplyDeleteI've heard good things about this one. I'll give it a go when I need something light and fluffy to read.
ReplyDeleteThis book sounds like a really fun read and I actually just bought this book today because I also love Ya novels and Kdramas. After looking over the list of kdrama tropes I find it interesting how it seems like some dramas follow almost all of them while other dramas barely follow them at all for instances I would say The Heirs follow about twenty of the tropes listed while I Hear Your Voice sort of follows around seven of them. I'm also a little surprised that living together didn't make the list of kdrama tropes because it is super common in dramas although I know it would never happen in a YA novel I still think it deserved to be mentioned. I'm sure that your to be watched list is nowhere near as out of control as my to watch list is because I have 101 dramas on my to watch list as of right now so don't feel too bad about adding a few more dramas to yours.
ReplyDeleteLilly: Do you have some place where you list your to be watched list? I want to see this list!! My list is longer than the one I have here on the blog... I keep forgetting to add things to it!
DeleteI figured that your to be watched list had to be bigger than the one on this blog because you keep mentioning that are adding new dramas to yet the list hasn't changed in a while. I actually only had that list written down but I recently finished making a to be watch list on mydramalist here's the web address to that, https://mydramalist.com/dramalist/lillylilac/plan_to_watch
DeleteIt seems that I somehow add a few new dramas to it in the past fews days so now I have 108 Kdramas on it, my profile is also up to date on my completed and currently watching dramas as well right now.