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A review by mehvie
Frankly in Love by David Yoon
3.0
They say immigrants bring their aesthetic with them where ever they go and now I know its true.
I was super excited when I got to know that Nicola Yoon's husband was coming out with a novel! I read the blurb and was like this sounds like an interesting book- yes it has its cliche fake-dating scenario but it caught my attention.
Frank Li is in his final year of school where big decisions such as what university to go to and taking the SATs were made to be taken. Frank is your average Korean-American teenager who has a basic idea of the Korean culture and the expectations from his immigrant parents ( don't we immigrant children know the drill... get good grades, get into a good university, get a great job and finally get married lol).
Frankly in Love gives us a better understanding of the Korean culture and the difficulties which Korean- American have such as:
- dating non-Koreans
- Racism (Their community being racist towards other communities)
- the language barrier between the children and parents.
I bet his intentions were pure, to educate his readers about the Korean culture and being a child of immigrant parents but I felt the author was trying to put in many concepts and ideas in this one book. Another thing which annoyed me was the author trying to sound like teenagers nowadays! The book has a funny and sarcastic tone to it but it does get boring.
Some positives about the book- I loved the cultural representation and how Frank learned about his parents. One thing I liked was the explanation of the hyphen between Korean-American; from what I understood from the idea of the hyphen was that people within your community won't completely consider you from the home country (for instance Korea for Frank) and people outside the community won't consider you from their land ( for instance America for Frank). And I could relate to this concept.
All in all, i didn't like this book as much as I thought I would.
I was super excited when I got to know that Nicola Yoon's husband was coming out with a novel! I read the blurb and was like this sounds like an interesting book- yes it has its cliche fake-dating scenario but it caught my attention.
Frank Li is in his final year of school where big decisions such as what university to go to and taking the SATs were made to be taken. Frank is your average Korean-American teenager who has a basic idea of the Korean culture and the expectations from his immigrant parents ( don't we immigrant children know the drill... get good grades, get into a good university, get a great job and finally get married lol).
Frankly in Love gives us a better understanding of the Korean culture and the difficulties which Korean- American have such as:
- dating non-Koreans
- Racism (Their community being racist towards other communities)
- the language barrier between the children and parents.
I bet his intentions were pure, to educate his readers about the Korean culture and being a child of immigrant parents but I felt the author was trying to put in many concepts and ideas in this one book. Another thing which annoyed me was the author trying to sound like teenagers nowadays! The book has a funny and sarcastic tone to it but it does get boring.
Some positives about the book- I loved the cultural representation and how Frank learned about his parents. One thing I liked was the explanation of the hyphen between Korean-American; from what I understood from the idea of the hyphen was that people within your community won't completely consider you from the home country (for instance Korea for Frank) and people outside the community won't consider you from their land ( for instance America for Frank). And I could relate to this concept.
All in all, i didn't like this book as much as I thought I would.