#I’ve read a lot of YA contemporary books where the portrayal of social media and made up apps doesn’t feel right; but this one did to me!

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads

Wren Martin Ruins It All

YA contemporary romcom

student council president proposes to cut the school valentine’s dance because it's expensive and alienating for queer/single people, but instead the vice president (who he adamantly hates for being perfect) suggests they get sponsored by a popular friendship app

he decides to secretly give the app a go to “know his enemy” but ends up making a friend, and starts to catch feelings for him...and maybe realises the guy he hates isn't actually so bad either...

ace mlm MC, aro-questioning side character

I loved this so much! great MC with a funny internal monologue

despite the title most issues or misunderstanding are sorted out pretty quickly rather than drawn out for the drama and plot. which is refreshing

I was a little nervous about the concept of ‘ace hates the school dance and wants it shut down’ - there's a bit of a stereotype of aspecs being boring Fun Haters - but I think it did a really good job of showing the specifics of why, not dragging it out, and also that he’s just a snarky fun hater in general with not much weight behind it.

There’s also no discovering of sexuality or big coming out (just one-on-one) - he already knows he’s ace, and it comes up naturally a bunch, talking about how dances etc can feel isolating, the way the friendship app called buddy being called ace-friendly can feel infantilizing, avoiding dating because of the stress of having to check upfront if people about it, etc.

I would have liked to know more about his relationship with his mum? Though I understand that it’s clearly something he avoids thinking about - going too deep into his relationship with his parents might have changed the tone a lot. but still.

ARC from netgalley thanks netgalley

[bforbookslut]

Review: I Believe in a Thing Called Love by Maurene Goo

I have given this book ☆☆☆.  325 pages. It belongs to the Young Adult Contemporary genre. Farrar, Straus & Giroux published it. It was published 30th May 2017. I would recommend it to anyone who loves quirky heroines and light, fluffy contemporary young adult romances. 

The blurb reads: “Desi Lee believes anything is possible if you have a plan. That’s how she became student body president. Varsity soccer star. And it’s how she’ll get into Stanford. But—she’s never had a boyfriend. In fact, she’s a disaster at romance, a clumsy, stammering humiliation magnet whose botched attempts at flirting have become legendary with her friends. So when the hottest human specimen to have ever lived walks into her life one day, Desi decides to tackle her flirting failures with the same zest she’s applied to everything else in her life. She finds guidance in the Korean dramas her father has been obsessively watching for years—where the hapless heroine always seems to end up in the arms of her true love by episode ten. It’s a simple formula, and Desi is a quick study. Armed with her “K Drama Steps to True Love”, Desi goes after the moody, elusive artist Luca Drakos—and boat rescues, love triangles, and staged car crashes ensue. But when the fun and games turn to true feels, Desi finds out that real love is about way more than just drama.”

I apologise that I don’t have any quotes for this review (and therefore, little to no evidence) because I went on vacation with this book and forgot to bring my post it notes.

"But I never lost the belief that you could will something just by sticking to it, by being unwavering. By keeping your eyes on the prize. And by doing that, there was nothing you couldn’t control about your own life.”

Verdict:

I wanted to really love I Believe in a Thing Called Love (IBiaTCL). After all, the MC is a girl of Asian descent (that’s me) who is naturally an overachiever (not exactly me but I can relate), has trouble dating (23 and terribly single with no prospects whatsoever) and loves Korean dramas (also me).

But I’m terribly on the fence with it.

Mostly because Desi Lee is written as such a caricature of K-dramas, ignoring the fact that Korean dramas are incredibly diverse. They have the typical high school romances (that IBiaTCL are most likely based on), crime dramas, soap opera-like dramas, family dramas and the list goes on. Even though Maurene Goo is of Asian descent, IBiaTCL seems to have been written from a very white lens and is as clichéd and predictable as they come.

But, when it comes to the K-dramas of the cheesy, romance variety, clichedness and predictability are at its core. And that’s why IBiaTCL got three stars despite how much I disliked it.

Also, it’s well-written, fast-paced and Desi Lee’s antics are incredibly funny in a what-the-fuck-are-you-doing sort of way. It’s refreshing to see her antics /mostly/ backfire and she has to try and save herself.

In the end, I hoped IBiaTCL had ended differently but ah, well.

[contains spoilers]

The Bad:

This gets a little rant-y.

There’s so much incredulity with Desi Lee that she seems like an almost unrealistic MC. Aside from the ridiculous name (which is attributed to her parents’ love for Desi Arnaz of I Love Lucy fame). 

Desi is an overachiever who knows all there is to about cars, is a sports star, class president and all around know it all.

To top it off, she’s got super dooper good-looking best friends

and boo-hoo, she’s the least good-looking one

and she gets picked on because she’s an annoying know-it-all.

Yet, Desi thinks she’s super friendly and nice and that everyone likes her.

And she’s super obsessive, she stalks her crush and manufactures moments to bump into him and make him fall in love with her.

Let’s also not forget that there’s the oh-so-cliched female rival who hates Desi’s guts because of something Desi didn’t even know she was doing.

Oh, and the cherry on top of the cake, is that the guy falls immediately for her.

On the other hand, I can’t ignore the fact that since IBiaTCL is heavily influenced by K-dramas, these sort of things are pretty much standard in a K-drama plot. The heroine is unrealistically beautiful and everything seems to fall in her lap, yet, she’s branded as the outcast and the weird one, and in Desi’s case, a world-class nerd.

In K-dramas, no matter how ridiculous it sounds, the heroine goes out of her way to manipulate her love interest to fall in love with her. Even in a most recent drama, Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo, a university student pretty much sacrifices a lot of her life’s hopes and dreams to make her love interest fall in love with her, lying about who she is and such. Although, I will say that it’s mostly in high school drama romances that this sort of thing happens because romances with adults are less, for lack of a better word, ridiculous.

But it’s just such a cringe-y rendition of how K-dramas can be used to fall in love that makes reading IBiaTCL such a troublesome read.

My big overarching issue with IBiaTCL is how much YA and society has progressed today but instead, this book sort of regresses.

For one, Desi Lee is the smartest, most accomplished girl in school. Instead of using her wits and her smarts, she throws all her intelligence out the window to chase this useless boy who couldn’t even see how much she’s worth. She’s not in the Art Club and immediately, he casts her out. Like, wtv, if you can’t see how smart I am and what a great female president I would be in ten years, bye felicia. But no, Desi Lee sees the hottest thing to cross her path and give her a little attention and she latches on.

Secondly, there’s just so much female rivalry in the book that I’m like, aren’t we already past this? YA can do better, babes. Violet who is in the Art Club, insanely pretty, also Korean and also vying for Luca’s affection is portrayed as an incredibly catty, petty and vindictive woman. And oh, it’s revealed later Violet and Desi used to know each other but Desi moved on and left the church and play school and shit and forgot about Violet which is so fucking normal. She was a kid when it happened, did Violet expect her to remember for the rest of her lives? I avoid people I know in primary school. It’s fucking normal unless you go up to her and introduce yourself????

Not to mention, Desi is contrasted directly against Lucas ex-girlfriend, Emily, who’s like insanely beautiful and model like and ruined Luca’s life by letting him get arrested for her graffiti and then completely discarding him and putting him aside. But Luca gets angry when Emily wants to commemorate their relationship by putting in on social media and says:

“You just reminded me how it’s never been about me, or how you feel about me. How it’s about manipulating your image, what it looks like to everyone else. How I can never tell what’s real.”

Yeah, damn straight. Manipulating. Even Desi realises it.

But oh, yay, congrats because Luca forgives her in the end for being fucking manipulative and almost risking his life. Because she even manufactured a car accident a la Descendants of the Sun but without the precarious cliff-dangling.

But I think the worst part about IBiaTCL is that Desi was ready to give up a life of Stanford and gloriousness for fucking love. She was a definite shoo-in for the off-Ivy League institution, hell, I would give my arm and my leg to study at Stanford but she throws it all away to drive halfway across the country for Luca????? That’s a stupid ass decision right there.

And it’s the most unrealistic thing. Girls, please never ever throw away your hopes and your dreams for some stupid boy who couldn’t even appreciate you for all your smarts and wits in the first place. He’s not worth it. He’s only in it for the sex.

And speaking of useless boys, why couldn’t we have an Asian love interest??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? WHY WAS DESI SO OBSESSED WITH THIS BOY WHOSE HERITAGE IS NOT ASIAN AND I’M NOT GOING TO ASSUME THAT HE’S LATINX??????????????????????????? She can clearly call him Won Bin (who, by the way, is not at all the standard of male handsomeness or even at the top of the desired K-actor list). Why couldn’t Maurene Goo have given us an Asian love interest? This brings to mind the whole why are brown men so obsessed with white women on screen thing and makes me wonder if it’s the same thing here.

The Good:

One of the good things about IBiaTCL is definitely the portrayal of Korean American home life. I am neither and I can’t speak about how authentic or realistic it is but it’s nice to have these sort of experiences in YA. It’s nicer to have them explained and discussed as opposed to Jenny Han’s To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before where Korean American home life is touched on very briefly.

Although, it’s interesting that in both these books with Korean American protagonists, the mother is not present and instead, the father has to raise a daughter. But then again, even in K-dramas, this seems to be a theme.

Another thing I thought was a nice touch is that in writing IBiaTCL, Maurene Goo consulted the moderators of dramabeans.com which I would go as far to say, is the leading source of drama recaps. My sister uses it. My friends use it. I don’t lol mostly because I prefer watching my dramas as opposed to reading them. So, on the topic of K-dramas, this book is in good hands.

In conclusion, K-dramas thrive on being extremely unrealistic, as do romantic comedies. Why should I expect this book to be any different?