Romancing the Stacks : I Believe In a Thing Called Love

Welcome to Romancing the Stacks. This is a series of reviews featuring one of my favorite genres: Romance Novels! Nothing is better than curling up with a good romance. This review will explore I Believe in A Thing Called by Maurene Goo.

It shocks me that I have never done a Young Adult (YA) novel for this series. YA books are the reason I got hook on romance. I still remember my favorite YA book from back in the day: Nick & the Nerd. While YA novel might be targeting teens I feel like they are teen and up. After all Twilight reached well beyond just teens and that book was YA. (I did read and love Twilight as a teen and still own all four books, but now I read them as a hilarious comedic romance rather as serious love stories. If you love Twilight, great, but I now view them as misguided romance that is shockingly funny. I will go into that more in a different post. ) I love that YA explore young and often first love. For my first YA book in this series I wanted to showcase one of my newest favorite YA author: Maurene Goo.

Summary:

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 in 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.

Book Review:

I loved this book. I think part of that is I am a huge fan of Korean dramas myself. I have binged watch several on Netflix though I haven’t seen any mentioned in the book. Korean Drama make Soap Operas look like serious dramas. They are over the top and ridiculous with their concepts. So the idea that a young high school girl using them to get a boyfriend is hilarious. I don’t know if having knowledge of Kdrama made this book funnier or not, but Desi herself doesn’t really know about Kdramas. Her dad was the fan that made her watch and that is when she got her crazy idea and started binge watching as many as she could. So I think you could enjoy this book without knowing much about Kdramas, but the knowledge does make it funnier. The funniest thing is that Desi thinks that the Kdrama antics are working, but in truth they are not. While her goal was to get a boyfriend, in truth she actually fell in love. I loved her supportive romantic father, and her friends who try to ground her. I love how actual Kdrama plot lines enter naturally with a love triangle appearing, but ending in an unexpected way. I even like that Luca though he was typical bad boy artist with rich parents kid he did evolve throughout the book. Plus through this misadventure Desi learns a lot about herself. I love a novel that has romance as the goal, but the end result is knowing more about yourself. I also like the diversity included in this book.

Check Out These Other Book by Maurene Goo:

  • The Way You Make Me Feel
  • Since You Asked
  • Somewhere Only We Know (Coming in 2019)

Rating:

Out Of

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