Rachel Reads & Reviews

Desi Lee is a straight A, type A, school president, Standford dreaming nerd. Basically she’s winning at everything in life with waaay too many extracurriculars and an almost encyclopedic/photographic knowledge of obscue things from Middle English to trees to cars, the latter thanks to her mechanic father. When she was little, she convinced herself that if she used her mind hard enough, tried hard enough she telepathically moved a pencil.

That opening scene really highlights the kind of mindset Desi has. That’s why it sucks that the one thing she fails at is in love. I mean she really fails. Her friends have dubbed it flailing because she’s flails and fails that bad every time from phgleming on a cute boy’s shirt to her pants dropping in front of another one.

So yeah, she’s pretty unlucky when she’s in a crush’s vicinity thus she has had no boyfriend ever. But as senior year comes to an end she decides she’s going to put an end to that flailure. Inspired by her father’s addiction to K-dramas and her own need for rules and steps, she will use their formulaic set-up to get close to Luca Drakos and fall in love.

As you can imagine with this sort of concept hijinks ensue with intresting results. With steps like get into life threatening danger, there are consequences that Desi really should have forseen for a future Standford scholar. But she’s infautuated so I’ll hold my disbelief. Though it does help that Desi feels guilt and is a bit self-aware of her craziness even though she decides to go through with her plans. It is a sign of a Goo’s skill that she managed to keep me on Desi’s side even though when said outloud Desi sounds like an obsessive stalker.

It helps that Goo writes with humor that not only made me smile but I actually laughed far too loundly in public. Not just from Desi’s humiliations but her relatable dry wit.

She also skillfully creates a warm relationship between Desi and her father, the two leaning on each other, trying to take care of everything themselves not to burden the other with their grief over Desi’s departed mother. Desi’s grief is actually an important plot point here tying her obssessive planning and her type A tendencies as a shield from the grief that she still can’t quite admit.

Goo also creates a lovely friend trio for Desi with two skilled flirts, Fiona and Wes who chide and help Desi with her plan yet remain their own people as Desi makes an effort to not get entirely consumed with Luca. I only wish there had been a bit more with them.

Now you might think I haven’t been mentioning the couple because I don’t like them together. Untrue. Luca and Desi were really enjoyable together and despite the manipulative way Desi orchestrated their first few meetings, they do have stuff in common that make it enjoyable to see them so happy. Luca helps Desi relax her perfectionism and Desi is a good sounding board for Luca’s parental troubles and artistic pressures. Plus, Luca initially seems like the perfect dream boy for Desi but as she and the reader comes to learn, he has his own flaws too turning this from fantasy to real life romance.

Additionally, the end has some K-Drama recommendations from Goo and her friends, highlighting the variety of the genre from contemporary romance to historical romance to historical romance with time travelling action to contemporary with military setting and so on.

The one nitpick I have is the denounment action in the classic girl loses boy and must win him back. It’s a bit out there and felt too manipulative and crazy just as when Desi resolves not to use the K-drama steps because they caused all the problems in the first place. If you can ignore it, it makes a nice book but I felt a little let-down with that scene.

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