I Believe in a Thing Called Love

by Maurene Goo

[Chelsea]

Actual Rating - 3.5
I liked this book a lot more than I thought I would considering I don't normally like contemporaries.

I've always been interested in Korea and Korean culture so it was especially great for me to read a little bit about it in this book. Our main character is Korean-American so there's little things she does that reflect her Korean background and the author was kind enough to give us just enough of an explanation that we understood but not too many details so that we could research what we were interested in. Or maybe that was just me.

My favourite character was easily Desi's dad. He made the book 100x better. I loved his obsession with k-dramas (I can relate to that) and he brought some great humour into the book. His relationship with Desi was also really nice to see. We don't often see such loving and respectful relationships between parents and children in YA books. It was a really nice change.

Plot-wise the book was only ok. I found some things that happen were a little too much. I tend to enjoy the over dramatic silliness in k-dramas but I didn't enjoy it as much in a book for whatever reason. Desi could be a little over the top sometimes which made me not connect with her at all. She was written to be that kind of character though and while it worked in this book it didn't work for me. The plot was also pretty typical if you've seen any k-dramas at all. Nothing overly spectacular.

I also thought Luca didn't have enough character development at all. We never really found out much about him and he was always just there. Usually the love interests are a little more active in the story than Luca was.

I did enjoy reading this story. It was fun and silly which is always a nice change from some of the more serious YA books that are popular right now. If you enjoy silly characters and over the top plot lines then you might like I Believe in a Thing Called Love!