Publication Date: February 6th
Read: February 16th
Rating: 4/5 stars
I don’t really why I decided to acquire an ARC of this book, given that I found both XOXO and The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea pretty middling. Maybe the cover appealed to me? Regardless, I was genuinely charmed by this book. I think that’s largely because of Sori, our lead. In XOXO, I remember thinking that she seemed like two different characters before and after she becomes friends with Jenny, but here she felt fully-realized and interesting, and I really liked the contrast between her cool & seemingly aloof outer persona with her soft, stuffed animal-loving interior. Sori is someone who seems cool but is actually cute, and that’s a character archetype I just like a lot. She also has a lot going on; she worries that she’s drifting away from Jenny, she’s often caught in the middle between two parents who should really get divorced, and she’s worried about disappointing her mother when she finally comes clean about the fact that she doesn’t want to debut as an idol. She’s used to balancing the needs of those around her and putting them before her own desires, which is why opening herself up to the fact that she wants to be with Nathaniel is a challenge for her in this book.
As for Nathaniel…I’m totally neutral on him. No, seriously. I don’t really like him or dislike him? He had believable ENOUGH chemistry with Sori (he listens to her, shows that he knows her well in various situations, cares about her, etc), but outside of that, I just didn’t feel like I got to know him well or was really invested in what I learned about him. One of his big personality traits is supposed to be that he’s a really jokey and flirty person, but I feel like even that didn’t come off super strongly? I mean, he made jokes, but I wasn’t necessarily cracking up when the jokes happened. Nathaniel is fine, and he has an acceptable amount of chemistry with Sori, so because she wanted him, I rooted for them.
Oh wait, I should tell you the premise.
This book is a companion to XOXO, so it contains a lot of the same characters. But instead of following Jenny, who is studying music in New York and dating Jaewoo long-distance, we’re focusing on Sori, Jenny’s friend and former roommate, who’s an idol trainee currently preparing to tell her mother (the founder of a kpop company) that she does not actually want to be an idol. Also, she keeps getting thrown together with Nathaniel, which is awkward since they were briefly together a couple of years ago and things ended badly/awkwardly. After telling her mother that she doesn’t want to be an idol, Sori is tasked with getting a trainee ready to debut with a new girl group in a very short timespan, so she’s forced to balance her concerns about mentoring this girl with her concerns that her mother’s company might be struggling financially AS WELL AS her concerns that she still has feelings for Nathaniel and is seeing him here there and everywhere. So there you have it.
I truly do think a lot of my enjoyment of this book rode on the fact that I liked Sori much more than I’ve liked any previous Axie Oh character that I’ve read (Sorry Jenny, but I truly did not root for you and Jaewoo). She loves stuffed animals! She has a complicated relationship with her mom but loves her anyway! She’s had a fundamentally lonely upbringing but her life is gradually becoming filled with love and friendship! Even though some of the conflicts in this book were resolved perhaps a bit too cleanly at the end, I was still fine with it, because I was happy that Sori was happy. I was even able to forgive the fact that Sori says her preferred romance trope is second-chance romances, and normally I hate that kind of wink-wink nudge-nudge fourth wall breaking.
It’s also worth mentioning that when I read XOXO, I definitely was not a kpop fan at all, so I was reading it as basically a total outsider. I am now a kpop fan, so I have more context for certain things (like the fan culture, what variety shows are, how promoting songs kind of works, etc). This probably also enhanced my experience a bit; I had a lot of fun imagining the variety show that Sori goes on, for instance. I think I would have liked Sori’s character regardless, so I probably would have enjoyed the book regardless, but…possibly less. It’s hard to say for certain.
Overall, to me this book is a really cute coming of age that also happens to be a romance. That’s not to say that the romance isn’t central, because it is, but to me the coming of age and character arc of Sori were the real draw. Others may feel differently. Maybe everyone else reading this book is obsessed with Nathaniel. Me? I’m obsessed with Sori. I love her endlessly. <3
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