Frankly in Love by David Yoon

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

THIS IS AN ARC COPY! 

Synopsis

Frank Li is a high school senior living in Southern California. Frank's parents emigrated from Korea, and have pretty much one big rule for Frank - he must only date Korean girls.

But he's got strong feelings for a girl in his class, Brit - and she's not Korean. His friend Joy Song is in the same boat and knows her parents will never accept her Chinese American boyfriend, so they make a pact: they'll pretend to date each other in order to gain their freedom.

Frank thinks fake-dating is the perfect plan, but it leaves him wondering if he ever really understood love - or himself - at all.

NO FRICKIN WAY

I had no idea that David Yoon was married to Nicola Yoon… I did happen to look over at my shelf at one of her books to see if the last name was spelled the same way. I just thought it was a coincidence until I read the author info. 

I don’t mean to cause  any discord between the two, but I must say I enjoyed his writing style way more than I did Nicola’s. 

He’s Got It

This book flowed sooo well. All the sub plots and main plots were laced so seamlessly together. It definitely took a few turns that I wasn’t expecting at all. Which I loved. I hate reading a book where I can already guess how the story will turn out before I’m even halfway through it. But this book was full of so many surprises. 

What David Yoon has written here, is genuine and raw. It’s not just relative to Koreans or Asians, but in retrospect, it’s relative to every minority out there. Every person mixed with more than one race and every person wanting to be with someone outside of their race. 

Personally 

Being someone who’s mixed, finding myself in dominantly white situations, I thought David created some really accurate points and made some very REAL scenes. It seemed that a lot of them could have been real situations in his own life. 

I love Korean culture. And i would love to think that the struggle Korean-American’s face don’t differ much from African-American’s, Mexican-American’s and etc. We all share the feeling of not belonging somewhere fully. 

Characters/Writing

I must say I loved each and every character in this story. David Yoon has captured every version of Frank Li. The witty, laid back version of him when he’s with Q. The trusting, loving, carefree version of  him when he’s with his girl. The reserved, doubting, well behaved version of him when he’s with his parents. 

We literally see Frank navigate back and forth between all these personalities and what David Yoon is trying to portray here is that Frank can’t just be himself. He doesn’t know who he really is. 

All the characters were well developed. None of their traits blended with each other. The dialogue between them all was great; right down to Franks’ parents’ broken English. I loved it all. 

David Yoon makes it easy to fall into the story. His writing style is almost conversational. The internal dialogue was absolutely amazing. Nothing was too far out. It’s really hard to find an author who can convey such a profound message in such a relatively simple way. 

It’s “simplicated”