Author: Red Feather

Genre: Drama/action/mystery

What I liked about this book:

I REALLY like Tara.

She's super relatable. I could definitely relate to feeling like you aren't good enough to do something you really like. And I can never really tell if her anxious moments (like when she first meets the band) are a true account of how the situation looks, or if it's just that she's an unreliable narrator--I can definitely also relate to having that level of anxiety myself. 

I also kind of like that this appears to not be a standard 'girl falls in love with kpop artist' book. By the summary, something fucked up is going to happen, and I keep waiting on bated breath for it to. This genre isn't my wheelhouse, but I found myself compulsively reading it anyway.

On top of that mechanically your writing is smooth and pretty easy to read, which I also appreciate.

What I did NOT like about this book:

There are some pacing and structural issues here. This *does* read like a standard 'girl falls in love with kpop' novel, and it took me a hot minute to key into the fact that wasn't what I was reading. The pacing starts to drag through 'the return' the most, and I felt a bit disconnected from where I was. Part of it might be structure--I'm not sure that's the best place to reveal that Tara is an opiate addict, and I wasn't really expecting a dream sequence there, so it took me a minute to orient myself. I think sprinkling those details of what went on with her ex boyfriend and roommate through the narrative might work a bit better.

I'd also like some more differentiation between the kpop boys. Right now they all sort of feel like the same character, mainly because they aren't really described much. And honestly? Hot take, your best bet here might be to take the seven of them and compress them into three or four--smaller casts are much, MUCH easier to keep track of in my experience.

Some of the setup details also didn't make sense. Presumably when they're dressing her up as a band member, since she's pretending to be one of the male band members they're trying to hide her breasts, but a corset doesn't work for that, it accentuates them. It also puzzles me why they pulled the janitor instead of a professional dancer--but like I said, I get the intense feeling something fucked up is about to happen, so I'll keep reading before passing judgment on that specifically.

Honestly I think this has a lot of first draft issues which is forgivable since, like, it's a first draft.

Overall:

This actually earned my sub.

Rating:

7/10. I actually enjoyed this a lot, the writing was decent even if it had some flaws.