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A review by ladybookamore
My Ramyeon Girl by Nethra A.
4.0
First and foremost, I thank the author for giving me an opportunity to review a romance novella. It has been a long time since I read a <100 page book, and My Ramyeon Girl was like a breath of fresh air.
An beautiful juxtaposition of the Desi with the Korean, My Ramyeon Girl is a very innovative love story. I say "innovative", because the story explores various aspects of South Korea as the dominating cultural hub of Pop music and television dramas today. Moreover, the book throws light on the perils of being a star, the behind-the-scenes of filmmaking, and how fame tends to rust away an individual's personal life.
No. My Ramyeon Girl is not merely a story of love involving two persons who belong to two different races, ethnicities, and cultures. And this is the reason why I enjoyed reading this book so much. The book adopts quite a number of romantic tropes — a celeb-commoner relationship, different cultural backgrounds, and so on. Yet, the beauty of My Ramyeon Girl lies in three important aspects of the novella — theme, structure, and characterisation. The themes dominating the entire fictional landscape includes cinema, popularity, fame, race, identity, sacrifice, determination, and hope. Though the first two acquire the initial few pages of My Ramyeon Girl, the rest prevail till the last page. In fact, I personally felt that the idea of "a new beginning", which the prologue highlights on, springs out from the themes of fame, identity and sacrifice more prominently than the rest. The author handles these themes very subtly and beautifully. Next up is the structure. The fact that My Ramyeon Girl is less than 100 pages long is an eye-opener itself. There is a lot of introspection that occurs throughout the plot, and it allows the readers to get acquainted with the character's self with more proximity. The narrative is linear, the point-of-view being from the third person entity.
However, the language did not meet my expectations. The writing style and vocabulary is really good, but the language and grammatical aspect of it requires some brush-up. That way, My Ramyeon Girl would definitely become a better story.
The characterisation, however, is what impressed me a lot. I am glad the author created the characters unique and imperfect, rather than the usual flat characters with rarely any developments in their respective storylines. The author emphasises on their cultural differences, their varying perspectives towards the world, and how they themselves react to it with such simplicity that it is difficult to not admire the work. My Ramyeon Girl is an inspiring story of being one's own self, and taking the leap of faith. I convey my best wishes to the author for her future endeavours.
An beautiful juxtaposition of the Desi with the Korean, My Ramyeon Girl is a very innovative love story. I say "innovative", because the story explores various aspects of South Korea as the dominating cultural hub of Pop music and television dramas today. Moreover, the book throws light on the perils of being a star, the behind-the-scenes of filmmaking, and how fame tends to rust away an individual's personal life.
No. My Ramyeon Girl is not merely a story of love involving two persons who belong to two different races, ethnicities, and cultures. And this is the reason why I enjoyed reading this book so much. The book adopts quite a number of romantic tropes — a celeb-commoner relationship, different cultural backgrounds, and so on. Yet, the beauty of My Ramyeon Girl lies in three important aspects of the novella — theme, structure, and characterisation. The themes dominating the entire fictional landscape includes cinema, popularity, fame, race, identity, sacrifice, determination, and hope. Though the first two acquire the initial few pages of My Ramyeon Girl, the rest prevail till the last page. In fact, I personally felt that the idea of "a new beginning", which the prologue highlights on, springs out from the themes of fame, identity and sacrifice more prominently than the rest. The author handles these themes very subtly and beautifully. Next up is the structure. The fact that My Ramyeon Girl is less than 100 pages long is an eye-opener itself. There is a lot of introspection that occurs throughout the plot, and it allows the readers to get acquainted with the character's self with more proximity. The narrative is linear, the point-of-view being from the third person entity.
However, the language did not meet my expectations. The writing style and vocabulary is really good, but the language and grammatical aspect of it requires some brush-up. That way, My Ramyeon Girl would definitely become a better story.
The characterisation, however, is what impressed me a lot. I am glad the author created the characters unique and imperfect, rather than the usual flat characters with rarely any developments in their respective storylines. The author emphasises on their cultural differences, their varying perspectives towards the world, and how they themselves react to it with such simplicity that it is difficult to not admire the work. My Ramyeon Girl is an inspiring story of being one's own self, and taking the leap of faith. I convey my best wishes to the author for her future endeavours.