See how Korean pop-tastic, K-Pop Confidential rocked our world!
K-Pop – the blurb
Candace Park’s life is all planned out. She takes all AP classes, helps her parents at their dry cleaner, and spends what little free time she has watching Rupaul’s Drag Race. Then there’s graduation, college, and a “Real Job.” What her parents and friends don’t really know, though, is that she has a secret passion: singing. But what’s the point? She’s never seen an Asian-American girl make it big as a singer-songwriter anyway.
So when Candace enters a K-pop audition at the mall on a dare, she doesn’t expect to actually win. She definitely doesn’t expect to plunge headfirst into the grueling world of a K-pop trainee. Especially when her parents don’t approve of it…at all.
But when they offer her the chance to travel to Seoul, South Korea to train at the top Korean music company in the world, how can she pass it up? The only problem is, in addition to the round-the-clock singing lessons, dance rehearsals, and beauty treatments, Candace has to agree to follow the uber-strict rules of a trainee. The most important of which is: NO DATING. But it becomes pretty much impossible to follow when Candace finds herself in the middle of a love triangle between a sweet boy trainee and a superstar member of the hottest boy band in the world.
Will all of her hard work be wasted if she follows her heart? Or can she be the perfect, hair-flipping idol and stay true to herself at the same time?
Korean bubble gum
I’ve recently been to Japan and Nigeria with my previous reads. Not content to stop there, K-Pop flies me over to Korea to experience the ‘Hallyu‘ that is Korean culture, more specifically its music. I’ve never read anything set in Korea yet I took to this pop-tastic, bubble gum, fierce, young adult read like a duck to water. I’m 37 years old, don’t speak a word of Korean and have a playlist on Spotify filled with Del Amitri yet I was all over this book. I loved the Korean submersion, the language, the food. It was very clever of Lee to have Candace as an Asian-American. We got to go on the journey with her as she discovers the intricacies of Korean life.
ON TOP OF THIS was the sensation that is K-Pop or Korean popular music. Something that on the face of it looks like pretty boys and girls, usually with multicoloured hair, completing perfectly choreographed moves on a dance floor to insanely pop filled songs. Now before K-Pop I had heard of BTS and could even sing Dynamite:
But I had NO IDEA of the factories (I mean schools) that they have over there churning out Korean pop prince after Korean pop princess. The insight Lee provided was a true eye opener. And I found the whole experience infectious. I couldn’t put it down.
A side of romance
Blinded though I was by the music, lets not forget our heroin Candace Park. Whisked from unambiguity to perhaps one of the most famous girls in Korea. She was sassy, determined yet vulnerable and had the world at her fingertips. It was interesting to read about a character who was so on the verge of world domination. And of course, what would YA be without a forbidden love story? I confess this was probably my least favourite part of the book but only because by this point I was totally addicted to the music. MORE POP PLEASE!
I’ll just google Blackpink
I’ve never had my eyes opened so much to something that is happening RIGHT NOW. K-Pop is a brilliant read. Teens will no doubt get all the references immediately without having to head to Google. It is lipstick and glitter yet there is steel underneath and a wealth of knowledge. I haven’t been so all over a book in a long time. It needs to be made into a film, immediately, and I need to be first in the queue at the cinema. But until then, READ THE BOOK.
