Review: Hart & Seoul

Hart & Seoul 
Rating: 3/5
Buy or Borrow: Borrow 
Source: Copy courtesy of NetGalley in exchange for an honest review! 

Merilee Hart has been doing her best to keep things together since her mother left, her art a welcome escape from her depressing new reality. But things seem to go even more awry the moment her next door neighbor’s enigmatic and mysterious nephew arrives from South Korea. Lee is moody, cocky, and utterly infuriating.
But when Merri’s closest friends betray her and her father crushes her dream of going to art school, Merri finds herself drawn to Lee, who seems to live within even greater shadows than her own. And just when she thought things couldn’t get crazier, Merri’s world is upended when she discovers Lee’s big and bizarre secret…he is none other than a runaway member of the K-pop mega-group Thunder.

It’s not long before Thunder’s fans, the Storm Chasers, begin to close in on Lee, ready to do whatever it takes to return their favorite idol to his rightful place in the band. Faced with the prospect of even more heartbreak and caught up in an international whirlwind that has a life of its own, Merri realizes that she must find a way to mend herself, gain control of her life, and pursue her dreams—her heart and soul depend on it. 

I'm sure if you follow me on Twitter or watch my YouTube you'll understand just how badly I wanted to love this book. I wanted to give it 5 stars. I wanted to rave about it. I wanted to shove this book at everyone and make them read it. It's literally no secret that I love K-pop and K-Dramas, ever since falling down those particular black holes however long ago, and I've been so wishing and praying someone would do for K-pop what's been done with Western bands when it comes to books. A fun, contemporary rom-com with a K-pop group to go with all the ones for pop/rock groups, which I admit are my guilty pleasure. 

I stumbled across this on NetGalley and immediately slammed that request button because HELL YES! Someone heard my prayers. I was so ready to dive in to this, and to experience all the warm and fuzzies. Unfortunately, I can't give this the 5 stars I wanted to, and I can't give this a glowing review. 

As I started the book, I wasn't immediately grabbed, it did take me a while to get in to it, I read a chapter here and there until I actually sat down to read it in one go to get it done. It was also incredibly obvious what was going on with a certain character but then again I expect a certain level of predictability from contemporary books, nothing major. But that's not where my main issue lies. 

First things first, I am not Korean, obviously. Nor am I fluent in Korean, I'm just learning so feel more than free to correct me if I'm wrong. I don't want to offend anyone, apologies if I have but I've tried to articulate all of this as best as I can. I don't want to be disrespectful and you know...I wanna stay in my lane but I feel like the faults with this book do need to be acknowledged, I know it's "just" a contemporary rom-com book but still. I'd also be very interested to see an own voices reviewer give this book a try and read their thoughts on it, but for me? Well. Strap in because by the looks of GoodReads it's time for yet another unpopular opinion. 

Merri was kind of...I don't know. I struggled to like her a little bit in the first couple of chapters, don't get me wrong, the predictable thing reveal had my heart dropping for her even though I knew it was coming, and she had me cheering for her with the beans. However, for most of this book she bugged me. To me, personally...I found her so rude and ignorant. I don't know if it's just me having unrealistic expectations for people, or what. Like I know she's from some small town in the US and isn't all that up on her K-pop knowledge but I found it really rude that she was calling him by his surname the entire book and initially made zero effort to learn or say his real name. Then again I guess for the author "Hyung Kim" didn't roll off the tongue as well as Lee for her. I just found it kinda disrespectful to be honest, I know he said it was okay but for most of the book she just kept doing it. Can't say I'd love someone calling me by my surname because they couldn't be bothered to pronounce my first name. 

I know she knows nothing about Korean culture and K-pop and stuff but it also really irked me that rather than use this really awesome thing called Google to do some research on her own and then ask the male lead to clarify or explain anything deeper, she just used him like a walking, talking Google. I know she wants to learn but if that was me, I'd find it really tiresome let alone low-key rude to have someone clearly not bother to try and learn anything on their own but expect me to explain everything and anything. Some of her remarks and her culture comparisons also had me like wow. She just didn't come across as the most open minded and she seemed completely ignorant so many times, I just found it hard to like her, like make some effort pal. 

It also grated on me the way she described him speaking Korean because it came across almost like she was making fun of him and the way he spoke, and I wasn't a fan of how the author wrote some of his dialogue because again, it seemed like she was making fun of the way he spoke more than anything else. I just feel like it could have been handled better and I did check to see if this was an own voices author...I was not at all shocked that it wasn't. 

It was blindingly obvious from the way the Korean words were written and I am honestly baffled as to how the hell this book made it through the editing process without anyone, anyone at all using damn Google translate to check the words. When I thought this was a one off back in chapter 2, I wasn't going to mention it because I felt I was being too picky but throughout this book two Korean words are repeatedly spelt wrong and it couldn't be more obvious the author has no grasp of the language and has just taken words she's heard from the K-Dramas she watches and put them in here, clearly without checking how to spell them and none of the editors checked either. Mind blown. Especially as other, longer words, are spelt correctly and even 'wae' is spelt correctly too? 

Lee, and even Merri herself, said "deh" multiple times throughout the book. The first time I saw it, in chapter 2, I only understood that it was him saying yes purely from context because as hard as I wracked my brain, I couldn't recall if 'deh' was a word in Korean. Was he trying to say "an-deh" which is no? Clearly not based on context. 

Quick Korean lesson. The word for yes in Korean is 'ne' aka 네, which to my understanding is pronounced 'neh'. It irritated me every single time he said 'deh' instead of 'neh' and you can't tell me that it was done for readers to pronounce easier because it's not that difficult a word to pronounce. I know some people apparently hear it with a 'd' instead of an 'n' hence why I assume that the author just went by ear rather than actually looking it up. 

It's also why I assume she wrote 'bo' as the Korean word for 'what' and not 'mwo' (뭐) which is what it actually is. I know people hear it with the 'b' rather than the 'm', so forgive my assumption she didn't bother to check it and just wrote it how it sounded, but when it's spoken it is not a 'b' sound. Even if she has written it that way to make it easier for readers, not only are both words the wrong pronunciation but it's not even the right word? Like if I didn't have the context of the word, I'd have been staring at the page like "what is that supposed to be?". To my knowledge, 'bo" isn't even a word in Korean but feel free to educate me if you actually speak Korean. Like I said, I'm not fluent. 

If I didn't know Korean, I'm sure this wouldn't have bothered me because I wouldn't know any different, but I do and it consistently irritated me throughout the entire book once I realised it wasn't a one off mistake. I also think it's bothering me because people will learn it wrong, I know it's probably not that deep in the grand scheme of things, and you probably are side eyeing me for being so bothered by this but my brain was just going "wrong, wrong, wrong" the entire time and come on. How hard is it to Google two simple, basic Korean words and put the correct spelling with a pronunciation guide at the back if necessary? If you're going to include a language that isn't your own at least do it properly. 

I did kind of wonder if it was being done on what Merri was hearing, as like I said, those two words are misheard sometimes. So I wondered if we'd get the correct spelling once he corrected her but nope. It's consistently wrong throughout the entire book. 

Speaking of Lee Hyung-Kim, I loved him. His attitude, the cockiness with the low-key sweetness mixed in, he was brilliant. I lived for him putting Bree and Luke in their place. I was not, however, expecting the reason for why he fled. My heart broke for him honestly, and I don't agree with the mentality some of the fans displayed in this book and that you see in real life. You don't own idols, they're allowed to date, they are human beings even if they aren't always viewed as such by some fans. Seeing his reaction to being crowded by the fans, my heart ached reading how the fans were so determined to have him back in the group like let the poor sod take a break. 

I felt like it was well done for the most part, and a solid look at the pressure idols suffer and how that pressure effects them and their mental health. It's a pretty cold, hard look at the truth with the forced plastic surgeries all in order to appear perfect and the happy image that has to be shown at all times to the fans, even if they're suffering in reality. I do feel like it could perhaps have been explored a little more. We see his reaction to the fans and then that's kind of it, I thought we might delve in deeper with that and it's a shame we didn't, as her issues were dealt with to a deeper level. I know she's the main character, and I know it's a sensitive subject, but I felt it could have used more depth. 

I have to also mention, and this is probably just me, but seeing Jong-hyun of SHINee mentioned at the beginning of the authors note slapped me right in the face and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I do wonder if it was necessary to name drop him and what happened to him, rather than be more general about it. Like, it didn't really sit right with me that he was name dropped like that, but that's just my opinion.

Moving on to a couple of things I did like, I enjoyed how the culture clash between he and Merri was shown, with her being so offended by him because of his bluntness, and him dealing with being in America and the food and so on. I felt that was nicely done. It did have me chuckling, and it moved at a nice pace. After a certain point there's also a few K-pop and K-drama references as Merri ventures down the rabbit hole. 

Honestly, for the most part it was fun, along with a more serious note towards the end, and I liked how it ended. But this is not own voices and it shows in how surface everything feels. I'm not equipped to tell whether anything is glaringly incorrect other than what I already have, or whether anything is rude and so on. Although I did also side eye how Merri went from 0 to "holy K-pop" "OMO". I just side eyed some of the writing, and some of her dialogue. 

I feel like some things were quite authentic, the kimchi with every meal, Lee's bluntness and not getting sarcasm entirely. I'm not sure if the author has actually been to Korea or not, I'd say not. While I do love K-drama tropes and I did love them in this book because it was kind of like reading a K-drama. I just really do feel like the author has written this book based on her knowledge gleaned from K-dramas, both language and cultural. I just can't get my head around the misspelled words, to be honest. 

I assume most people reading this probably have some interest in dramas or K-pop, but for those that don't the groups and shows that are mentioned are the super popular, in your face, everyone talks about them kinda things, so my boys BTS, Boys Over Flowers and so on. It would have been fun to include some less popular ones but this walks a nice line of compromise for fans and non-fans. 

So to conclude this in some way, for the most part I enjoyed this, as much as I found Merri ignorant at points and irritating, she was also relatable in the way she fell down the K-drama rabbit hole. It's happened to all of us, let's be honest. While it didn't grab me straight away, I did find myself sucked in, and it had the cute, fluffy moments along with more serious moments and I appreciated the attempt to tackle the more serious side of K-pop, however my one glaring issue with this is presumably not an issue for the average reader. I just feel if you're going to use a language that's not your own then you should double, triple check everything is correct.