For fans of Korean pop culture and lovers of Korean music fan culture, Hart & Seoul is the book to check out. It ties in aspects of idol culture into a more familiar setting, essentially amplifying the trope of "bringing the big city boy to the small town girl". While this story may feel familiar to those who are already immersed in Korean pop culture, the style and writing may be jarring for first timers. The constant usage of Korean phrases sometimes distracted from the plot and dialogue. Overall, if you're looking for a fun contemporary read and you have a deep interest in K-pop, Hart & Seoul may be just the right book for you.

I thought I would really enjoy this book but I found it hard to connect with. I think it is very age specific and I'm a bit older for the book. I read a lot of YA, but this one just felt really young. I think it's definitely a cute enough, easy read but just not for me.

A really easy read, especially for those who are into K-Pop or K-Drama, but the story doesn't offer much in terms of originality from other offerings in the genre.

This was a light fun read and it was nice having the Korean culture tied in throughout! However, I did find it fairly predictable and cheesy sometimes. It didn't have the same strong impact as I was expecting, but not a bad book overall.

This was a cute, fun read. I loved the incorporation of Korean culture, food, and music. However, I found this book predictable and didn't think it added anything to the genre.

I have never really understood K-pop or the fascination with it but when I saw this book was up on NetGalley I knew I wanted to give it a shot and see if it would help me understand. Plus I would hopefully get a good contemporary story out of the deal. And now that I have finished this story I still don't understand K-pop but I do know that I really enjoyed this story.

It started out as a very light and cute contemporary story and by the end was looking at some very dark and deep things. Now being outside of the K-pop community I can't speak to how accurate that part of the story was but I can say that this book did not shy away from some really heavy things.

At the end of the day this was a story that I found very enjoyable with a couple that I loved seeing grow. And while I still don't think K-pop is for me: I am a big fan of Lee.

I was so excited for this book, but I ended up feeing a lot of anger towards this book. This probably is just a really personal thing, but so many things rubbed me the wrong way. I'm Chinese and not Korean, but even so, some things are just generally regarding Asian cultures.
One of the things that really bothered me was that Ms. Park couldn't seem to be 'properly' speaking English, that is, with actual grammar. Lee Hyung-Kim also had some encounter with this, when he said "she should go to hospital". I'm pretty sure this wasn't a typing fault or something, because Merri repeated this several times in her head, in the exact way. Another thing that really bothered me when Merri thought the following: "He didn't look old enough to have finished high school". From personal experience, I know it's not fun to have people think you're sixteen whereas you're actually twenty. So even when those things happen in real life, nothing in the book fought this to show that it is wrong to do so.
The storyline itself was fine, nothing special and very predictable. Had those 'problematic' aspects not been there, I would definitely have given this book three stars. Also because it tackles mental health problems, plastic surgeries and extreme pressure, to show that not everything is as it seems and that the K-pop scene is far from perfect.

Initially, I was drawn by the description of this book because I had never heard of this in the book community. I was expecting a love story, and I thought it would be predictable. However, it is definitely more than just I did not expect to two teenagers falling in love, because the main characters are so complex in their own ways, that I immediately wanted to discover all their layers.

Something that I did not know much about was the K pop world, and how complicated it can get for an artist, but like any young adult, I related to that character because it reminded me (to some degree) what the pressure of everyone around you added on to me whilst growing up.

I recommend this book to anyone that loves an original love story.

The plot is simple. A runaway k-pop star falls in love with the girl next door. Even though this story is cliche, I definitely enjoyed this book. I enjoyed it much that I read it in a single sitting.
Hart & Seoul has
- Celebrity and noncelebrity trope
- Cute characters. Merri is an artist and I really wanted to see her artwork especially the ones she posted in her blog. Lee is such an expressive character.
- We get to know the struggles - both physically and mentally a pop star faces. I didn't give it a thought much before the book.
- Special mention for mentioning kimchi and the piggy back.

Read this if you wanna read a cute and fluffy YA romance and also a kdrama fan.

I thought it was very interesting to read a novel with such diversity from a non-Korean author. I am not a huge fan of K-pop, however, after reading this novel, I think I want to start listening to them. Beginning of the novel when Merri began to have her life come apart, that was very heartbreaking and depressing. When Lee came along, it was fun to read their conversations and Merri's inner dialogue. It was also quite fun to read her reaction when she learned he was a runaway member of a K-pop group.

I highly recommend this book to K-pop lovers and romance readers who love brilliant writing.

Thank you to Netgalley for this copy of Hart & Seoul in exchange for an honest review.

As someone who loves K-Pop, I was definitely drawn to the blurb and found myself feeling very intrigued. A girl who falls in love with the K-pop star but doesn't know it? Sign me up.

But I have mixed feelings on this book. On one hand, I love how she included the topic of mental health in this book, as it's something I think needs to be talked about more in fiction. But on the other hand, there were a few mistakes. Some Korean words weren't written correctly, and I feel like the main character could have done research on Korean culture in the book, instead of relying on the MC to explain everything to her.

With that being said, the book read like a K-drama. It was a fast read and predictable at times, but had some heartwarming and serious moments throughout the story.

Hart & Seoul follows the story of Meri and Lee. They are more foes than friends at the beginning of the story. However, Lee is there to help Meri as her world starts to crumble. Soon Meri discovers that Lee is a k-pop star in hiding. I grew attached to both of these characters. They were real and lovable. So much so that couldn't stop reading, and I wanted to keep reading their story when the book was over. I was thrilled to see an announcement of the sequel on the authors instagram page!

This was super cute! I really enjoyed this. The plot line was fun and the characters were great! I highly recommend this!

Fun and a great read to start summer break. This is a light read that week have you laughing, crying and wanting more.

The book was okay. If you are new to k-pop and want to know more about it, this book is for you. The characters weren't very memorable. I didn't like how Merri acted as Lee was her Wikipedia. She could just google most of the things which she asked, this aspect was a little annoying. Also, it doesn't look that the author herself knows enough about Korea and k-pop to write about it. As I said, IF you are new, this book is okay. If you can ignore the little mistakes, then its okay too.

This was a nice romance book! I really liked Merri and I enjoyed the story. The struggles that Lee faced were handled well and I found them to be realistically done. The only thing that I had a tiny bit of a problem with was the way they made up but other than that the story was very sweet and endearing. I really had fun reading this and can’t wait to read the second book!

I found this book very nice and adorable - and yes a bit over the top sometimes in the book.
I really liked it, i know that there are issues that they don't talk that much about in korean culture but i really disliked the kpop-star for a while, but he kind of grew on me. But i also got used to it, because honestly? it felt like a k-drama just in a book way, and k-dramas are supposed to be wierd, adorable, over-the top sometimes. But nontheless. I liked it :)

Upfront I must say that I really enjoyed this book.  I couldn't stop turning the pages.  I read through this in two sittings and I couldn't stop.
But I have a couple of things I didn't love with this book.
First of all the book, especially in terms of plot and intrigue, was predictable.  The enemies to lovers trope was well done, but you knew exactly where this was going.  Boy meets girl.  Girl doesn't like boy, boy doesn't like girl.  Eventually, with a little bit of pushing, they become friends and then a little bit more.  The pair are torn apart in traumatic circumstances and then he wins her back in a grand, dramatic gesture.
Isn't that how all romance books go?  There was nothing new.  Nothing unusual in the telling of the story.
Until you got to the ending.  The ending was a cliff hanger, and I LOVE myself a good cliff hanger.  I don't like unresolved stories.  I want to know what happens right now!  Please, Kristen, when will the next book be out?
(And can I just say why don't big romantic gestures happen like that in real life?  Why couldn't that be me?)
But coming away from that, my other problem with the book was the use of Korean language in the book.  I have no problem with Korean wordage being used, even in speech but I would have preferred to have the word spelt in their correct romanisation rather than how Meri was hearing them, unless it was when her misunderstanding the pronunciation.  I've read Kristen's blog and she wrote something about how she went back and to between using the romanisation and phonetic pronunciation.  Here is the original post.  I think in the end, for me at least, she made the wrong decision on that one.
The characters were great.  Deep, well-rounded and human, and not just the two main characters, Lee Hyung Kim and Meri.  You meet a lot of other characters along the way and Burnham has obviously given a lot of thought to those characters and then never come across as 2-D.  Even down to the simple thing as when Lee never uses contractions and Ms. Parks stilted English.
In an ideal world I would have given this book three and a half stars but I would rather round down than up, especially with this, despite how close it was to four stars.
I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this to anyone and I hope that you enjoy it as much, if not more than I did.

As a millennial, I grew up with a love for Kpop. This book is every Kpop fans dream; girl ends up meeting a Kpop star without knowing who he is and they develop a relationship. While some might worry this would be streamed as fan fiction, the fictional plot does mention some popular Kpop bands, but the Kpop star in this book is completely fictional. I really liked how Kristen brings up the “dark side” of Kpop-stardom, which many might not know about, and there is a blurb at the end for those who might be struggling with their mental health. She mentions the suicide of idol 김종현, Kim Jonghyun, who passed in 2017 due to the many pressures and mental health struggles of being in the industry. The fictional idol struggles with issues as well in the book, and I think it is a great read for teen Kpop fans, as well as romance Romeo-Juliet like plots.

Hart & Seoul is a YA romance about a girl named Merri, who finds herself caught up in a love story that she never could have foreseen. When she discovers that her boyfriend has been cheating with her best friend, she finds herself falling quickly into her mysterious new neighbour's arms. He's obnoxious and secretive at first but, when she is forced to spend time with him, she discovers that maybe he's exactly what she needs to get over her heartbreak. Oh, and he's also a k-pop idol who's in hiding from millions of screaming fans.

When I saw that this book combined my love of cheesy YA romance and k-pop, I was really excited to give it a try. It seemed like a nice, lighthearted read and I thought it would be a nice change from the very heavy and intense novels I've been reading lately. I love learning about Korean culture and hoped that this book would provide a little insight into that, as well as a cute romance.

The cute romance was definitely there. The novel read a little like fan-fiction, but it did have a cute and cheesy plot, with the handsome boy-next-door and the massive romantic gestures that every good teen love story needs. I also thought that Merri's internal monologue, though a little strange at times, was very believable for a young girl going through what she was.

Unfortunately, I just didn't click with the rest of this book. The plots with both of her best friends were very cliche, her family drama, which should have been a much larger part of the plot, seemed to have just been thrown in at random points, and all other parts of the book, including the online stalking and mental health problems, which are very real and serious issues, fell away when there was a chance for a sweet, romantic scene. Everything also seemed a little too co-incidental and, although I knew that this book wouldn't be wholly realistic, based on the summary, I expected it to be a little more believable.

My main issue was the Korean representation. I am in no position to say whether this was accurate or not, but from the misspelled Korean words to the random Korean stereotypes and 'facts' that were thrown in when they were completely not necessary, I think that the Korean aspect of this story could have been better researched. A lot of these aspects of the book seemed like the author was trying to prove that she knew a lot about Korea, when she'd just done some online research and found out things that most international k-pop fans would already know. It would've been great if this book had presented Lee as a more authentic person, rather than someone who was outraged by very minor things.

I think it is important that the author delved into the darker side of k-pop, referring to Shinee's Jong-Hyun in the author's note and clearly showing that she intended to highlight the problems in the industry, and it was indeed obvious that Lee was troubled throughout the story, but I just didn't find the plots believable enough to be an authentic tribute. I hope that, if international fans of the Korean music industry do read this book, they'll realise that there are issues that need resolving, but I don't think this book provides enough depth for it to be a viable way of showing this.

Overall, I'm really upset that I didn't enjoy this book as much as I hoped to. If you're looking for an easy, cheesy romance and don't want to look too much deeper into the story, this book is fine, but I just found it too implausible to really enjoy it.