Review: My Summer in Seoul by Rachel Van Dyken

My Summer in Seoul
(My Summer In Seoul #1)
by Rachel Van Dyken
Publisher: Self-published
Publication date: Dec. 14, 2021
Genre: New Adult Romance
Rating:

Intern with Korea’s number one record label? Yes, please.
Find out there’s a huge scandal I need to help “manage”… not so much.
Add in the fact that I don’t recognize the “superstars” of the label and think they’re interns…
And my dream job quickly becomes more of a nightmare.

But I’m in Seoul, the one place that is beginning to feel more and more like home…
Except it isn’t home, and the drama surrounding the biggest K-pop group in the world, SWT, is consuming my every moment.
Spoiler alert. They hate me.
Everything I do is wrong: wrong clothes, wrong honorifics, wrong manners.
Till the leader of SWT takes pity on me.
But pity is dangerous when it comes from someone as beautiful as him.

Every SWT member is gorgeous, perfect, and cultivated to be an idol… lethal to a girl’s heart.
And sanity.
But fame plus a perfect face and voice don’t equal an easy life. As their comeback nears, the stakes rise higher.
Suicide watch…
Angry fans…
Threats…

All I want to do is survive.
But the price for survival might mean losing my heart.
And like a character in a K-drama, I’m not sure if there will be an actual happily ever after…
Or simply a lesson learned.

My thoughts…

This was a fun cute read about a young girl, fresh out of college who gets the chance of a lifetime. Her uncle, who runs a record label in Seoul, needs an intern to help manage a situation. He needs someone he can trust to not leak any information. So, when he finds out his niece needs a job, he jumps on the opportunity to bring her to Seoul to help him out. However, what he doesn’t mention is that she’s needed because there’s a huge scandal that needs to be maintained. One of the members of a k-pop group caused a stir and now the fans have revolted against him. Thus, making him extremely depressed and suicidal. What Grace thought was going to be a fun and simply job of fetching coffees for a record label turned into more of a babysitting job where the people she is babysitting hate her.

For the most part the book follows Grace as she not only navigates her new job, but the country itself. She’s Korean-American, and doesn’t know anything about the culture. Like, not wearing your shoes inside. Which, to me is just common knowledge and would be the first thing you learn when looking up the culture. So, I could kind of understand why the band members would be a little put off by her. I mean, not only is she someone knew invading their life, but she didn’t even do any research on the long flight over to give her an understand of the culture of the land she was moving to. I won’t sit here a lie, her lack of wanting to learn throughout the entire story really bothered me. Instead of taking the time to learn her job, learn the culture, and understand the people she’s been tasked with looking over, she ends up drooling all over them and eavesdropping on everything.

One thing that I really enjoyed about this story was all the behind-the-scenes stuff. Now, I’m not a K-pop fan. However, even I knew a lot of what was going on. From the intense pressure they are under. How they have to go through training and then MAYBE get a debut to the public. They are always watched and scrutinized. They can’t date because they need to be “accessible” to their fans. And the littlest thing can have the entire army of fans turning on you, making you feel isolated and attacked. So, getting to see these guys work their butts off, go front one training to another, only to jump right into interviews was very interesting. It was probably the best part of the book.

My Summer in Seoul was a really cute romance. I liked watching the guys train for their big release, and the potential love blossoming between Grace and one of the members. Not to mention, how the members all went from being hostile to viewing her as their little sister as the story progressed. I think for fans of the K-Pop world, this would be a must read.