I Believe in a Thing Called Love
A funny young adult novel about a Korean-American girl who uses K-Drama techniques to snag the boyfriend of her dreams. For fans of The Summer I Turned Pretty!
Desi Lee knows how carburetors work. She learned CPR at the age of five. As a high school senior, she has never missed a day of school and never had a B. But in her charmed school life, there's one thing missing—she’s never had a boyfriend. In fact, she’s a known disaster in romance, a clumsy, stammering humiliation magnet.
When the hottest human specimen to have ever lived walks into her life one day, Desi decides it's time to tackle her flirting failures. She finds her answer in the Korean dramas her father has watched obsessively for years—in which the hapless heroine always seems to end up in the arms of her true love by episode ten. Armed with her “K Drama Rules for True Love,” Desi goes after the moody, elusive artist Luca Drakos. All's fair in love and Korean dramas, right? But when the fun and games turn to feelings, Desi finds out that real-life love is about way more than just drama.
Maurene Goo's I Believe in a Thing Called Love is a fun, heartwarming story of falling in love—for real.
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Community Reviews
I don't think this is a good message to pass along to anyone, but especially the young minds these books are geared toward. The major repercussion from Desi's actions seem to be that she didn't get into Stanford, but this stemmed from one of her only human decisions in the story, putting Luca and his feelings before herself, not a repercussion from her treating Luca as an object. I do think my feelings would be different and not so strong if she didn't actually do harmful things. But she put their lives in danger, got Luca into serious trouble just for the sake of proving her theory worked.
The whole plot line was just a hollow excuse to use Desi's awkwardness with flirting as to why she needed these steps in order to make someone like her. It's not good to put the idea out there that a girl who is a little uncomfortable flirting needs to change herself and manipulate someone in order to find a partner. The right person is going to like you regardless, something that Luca says, but is overshadowed by the fact that she gets away with treating him so poorly. It's a cute, light story when taken at surface level with a terrible deeper message.
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