Play Book Tag discussion

Love love loved the South Korean 'slice of life' aspect of this book. So much culture is captured with the standards of beauty, drinking culture, gender differences, perspectives on children and marriage, plastic surgery, and more. I wanted to love this and give it 5 stars SO BADLY. It started of so strongly for me. The nostalgia did it for me, but the book left me wanting more.

This book follows 4 South Korean women who have different lives, backstories, but all live in the same apartment building. We see their lives intertwine, their relationships, and most importantly- their views on life, and how they came to have those views and perspectives. One is a woman struggling to conceive, another works in a 'host bar' getting paid to party with men, one is a mute hairdresser with a kpop obsession, and the last an artist who lived in NY for her college years. All the stories were intriguing for different reasons.

Unfortunately the book didn't really have an ending. I also didn't really like that the fact that some of the characters are orphans seemed to be used as an excuse for personality traits. There just wasn't enough time to fully explore all the aspects of the backstory- so I felt that it was lumped into a "well she was an orphan, that's why she's like that". I could have used 100 more pages with backstory and delving deeper into these characters.

Joi, I enjoyed your review. The stories do sound interesting to me as well as the South Korean slice of life. Glad you liked it!