Go to Your Room

I bought a print copy of one of the K-Pop romances on the market that seemed to have mostly favorable reviews; this so I could see what my potential competition is writing. I really don't like doing this, as I think you can pick up too many influences on your own work. On the other hand I'd never read any K-pop romances, so I thought it might be prudent to at least take a look (and since this is not reading for pleasure, I didn't count it last week.)

Since this was so obviously the author's first novel, let me say some positive things about the book:

It has nice cover art.

It was professionally proofed (this was spelled out in the front pages.)

The core concept is pretty good: American-raised Korean girl is forced to manage failing K-pop group to prove herself to her indifferent father and evil half-brother.

Some of the character names were interesting choices.

The writing is enthusiastic.

Yep, that's about it for the positives.

The story is basically a reverse harem BTS fanfic sex fantasy that the author decided to call a romance. For those who might be puzzled, reverse harem is a genre in which one female protag has sex with multiple male protags, or basically every guy in the book, first popularized by Laurell K. Hamilton in paranormal romance after she went through that very bad divorce. Now it's a legit genre.

I seriously doubt it was professionally edited. There were so many exclamation points, echoed words and repeated dialogue lines that my retinas are still reeling a little. I haven't seen a writer totally ignore the senses and descriptions this much since second grade when they made us read those Dick and Jane books (uh, no pun intended there.) It's all what is seen (minus sensory descriptions) and what is said or heard with grossly exaggerated emotional outburts. Kind of like reading Twitter posts, and about the same level of intelligence. Maybe the author wrote it on her phone.

Anyway, onto the romance. There is zero. There is a lot of emotional window-dressing, but it's not related to romance. I'm not sure you can even call this a romance. The male protagonist characters are indistinguishable from each other, and since there are six of them that's actually quite a feat. The female protag, who vacillates between annoyingly shrill, completely clueless and super slutty is apparently going to sleep with all of the group she is supposedly managing (now there's an interesting business model) by the end of the series; she had sex with three or four in this edition. Not good sex, either. Bad sex. Go to your room and stay there sex.

You know it's bad when you lose count of the sex scenes. There were six, I think? Or maybe seven. I can't remember who she had sex with, either. Or the sex itself. There was a pool involved in one. I'm pretty sure.

On the plus side, really not worried about my NA series now.