I had a difficult time with this book. The characters were supposed to be so unlikeable but you couldn't help admiring them a little bit anyway. The issue for me was the writing. I'm not sure if it's because it was a translation but it was not easy to get lost in the story. There's no other way for me to describe it other than the sentences seemed curt, forced. It just wasn't for me.

I received a copy from #NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

📖 "Just The Two Of Us (Book 1)" by #RyuHyang (Translation by @poppypubus)

⚠️TW: Trauma Related Content.

🩺 Soohyuk Cha is a Pediatric Emergency Doctor living in the US when an incident occurs that becomes the deciding factor in his decision to take up a 2 year residency in his homeland Korea to seek out answers.. Answers to who his birth parents were? Why can he not remember anything past a certain age? Why did they give him up? Not to mention he needed to escape the guilt his adoptive mother had been trying to make up for after he was subject to abuse by his adoptive father.

🍳 Yuna is a Small Restaurant Owner whose business specializes in Boxed Lunch deliveries. She was orphaned early in her childhood and experienced a major trauma that caused her to suffer from severe social anxiety and PTSD making her unable to be in confined spaces or around people, specifically men. She spends most of her time either in her small shop preparing the meals to be delivered or helping her brother & sister in law care for her nephew.

🥢 The story has a gang of supporting characters that give the novel a multidimensional feel as the writer takes you into the mind of every character so you get a complete understanding of what is going on within the many layers of the story and the mystery surrounding Soohyuk's past.

🇰🇷 The book reads like a Korean Drama so if you enjoyed KDramas like "What's Wrong With Secretary Kim?" - THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU.

❕The book does end on a cliffhanger but lucky for you, BOOK 2 in the Series is dropping MARCH 9, 2021.

I am very confused about this book.
When I read the premise, I was so excited for it because it sounded so very lovely.
After reading it, I am not quite sure if there were things that might've gone lost in translation or if I'm just too unfamiliar with Korean culture (then again, I do watch Kdrama from time to time).

I just felt like there was a red thread missing throughout this book. I never knew where it was going and when I was done with it I still wasn't quite sure what happened. It all felt like it was happening on one note.
Grocery shopping, hospital emergencies, romance - it all felt like it had the same level of excitement and drama and I couldn't find myself falling in love with the characters or... connect with them even.

At this point, I am quite unsure if that's because this book is simply not for me or - as I said - something has gotten lost during translation or isn't quite relatable for western audiences.

I liked the two main characters in this book. The internal monologues were well written. Felt like some of the description could have done with being reduced down a bit and replaced with more action.

DNF page 9.

There are some issues with the translation.

I'm giving 3 stars as I don't feel I've read enough to properly judge a rating and you can't review without the rating.

This book really wasn't for me. I thought the "cheating" at the beginning was a strange scenario, and when that was followed by a drop that he was working 3 days straight because of a school shooting I decided this book wasn't for me

This book is phenomenal it includes the hardships of medicine as well as the joys found in consuming home cooked meal. The storyline is great and makes this book such an effortless read! The way the author portrays the characters ultimately makes the the characters weave their way into the readers heart. I wholeheartedly look forward to the second novel.

This really is my fault, I keep on trying contemporary romance expecting to like it and thought maybe a Korean one would be my thing since I love k-drama. But no. Not my thing.

Ok so I understand that our hero is supposed to be this brooding, sexy doctor type, but unfortunately, he just came across as extremely rude and misogynistic. I understand the effects of a horrible childhood, I really do, but that doesn't give you the right to be an asshole, at the end of the day you are still accountable for your actions, not your childhood. I found the relationship and the development between the two characters to be very flat and awkward. This story had heaps of potential, however, it missed it in the execution. It was a nice story at points but was just overshadowed by everything else going on.

I received a digital ARC (advanced reader copy) from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I really wanted to like this book but the story was really slow and the plot didn't always make sense. Right off the bat, I had trouble understanding the prologue and the first couple of chapters since many of the characters are unnamed. I also had a really hard time visualizing the scene while reading because the places had names like 'H Hospital' and were never really described. The author tends to tell the reader what is happening instead of showing the reader what is happening. Overall, the book kind of reads like a screenplay instead of a novel

The male main character is a thoroughly unlikable doctor. I read about 75% of the book and he did not seem to have any redeeming qualities. I would have stopped reading earlier if it wasn't an ARC. His personality and the medical inaccuracies made the hospital scenes difficult to enjoy. The only redeeming part of this book is the female main character and her family. Although the characters don't have much depth, I thought the family scenes were heartwarming.

If this hadn't been an ARC, I would have DNF'ed it a long time ago... probably around 5%. I won't be doing a long review because honestly, I spent way too much time on this book even though I hated it and I just want to forget about it to move on to better things! Now, if you've seen a few reviews of this book, you'll know that it has huge problems of translation/writing but even if the translation had been perfect, I don't think it would have been a great read either way. If you're like me and expect an enjoyable romance standalone by looking at that cover, change your expectations. If you enjoyed reading this book though, I'm glad for you. You must stronger than me since this was a chore from beginning to end. Sorry.

(Thank you for letting me read and review an ARC via Netgalley)

As an asian woman, I really enjoy reading about characters that I can really relate to. Looks, food, families! This was a cute easy read that I finished in one day. The two main characters had an awkwardness about them that didn't always make sense, The translation was lost at times, but it wasn't too difficult to figure out.

I had high hopes for this one, but I found the male main character deeply unlikable and almost misogynistic. I DNF'd 30 pages in.

I really loved the premise of the book. A doctor with few social skills falls for the woman who makes the boxed lunches he loves, but two things prevented it from working for me. First the main character Dr Soohyuk is kind of terrible. He yells at and berates the nurses and residents working around him and clearly has a huge ego. He's depicted as being really dedicated to treating his pediatric patients, but for me that didn't redeem how awful he was to everyone else.

I also found some of the translation choices kept pulling me out of the story. When people would argue or curse the words didn't really make sense, and at one point a nurse calling a woman "ma'am" was meant to signify something meaningful, but we call everyone ma'am. It's a signifies that you're speaking respectfully to an adult woman, not necessarily that that woman has some sort of elevated status. Little details like that just made it hard for me to enjoy the story itself.

I thought Yuna was a lovely character, and the parts about food were really interesting, but the other issues just made this book not work for me.

If you ever sat watching a Korean Drama and thought to yourself "I really wish I could read a book like this" then look no further. This book was like reading a K- drama and all I could think was that I really would like to watch this as well. I absolutley cannot wait for the next book!

Thank you to NetGalley and POPPYPUB for this advanced copy which I recieved in return for an honest review.

1/5
Trigger warnings: physical abuse ; trauma ; abusive parent ; bullying ; sickness

There are so many things that annoyed me in this book. First, the writing... Our protagonists clearly had both a difficult childhood, but the writing is flat and conveys no emotions at all. I started the book getting a bit attached to them, and ended caring for non of them. I even thought about DNF-ing it at 50% but I don't like that, so I finished it, but I did not feel any joy with this book sadly.
I was also really annoyed with the characters reactions sometimes. Soohyuk has difficulties to feel emotions. I had a horrible childhood, so at first I found it being totally understandable. However, here I just got the feeling of him being disrespectful, not just bad at feeling emotions. At some moments he would be fine, caring and all, but most of the times he was really horrible

Thank you to Netgalley and POPPYPUB for letting me read this book in exchange for an honest review!

Soo-hyuk was found as a little boy without any memory of his previous life, so he was sent to the USA with a family. Luck was not on his side but he became a doctor anyway. As his last girlfriend cheats on him, he decides to go to Korea and find his true family. There is where he meets Yuna for the first time, the only person whose food Soohyuk can eat without feeling ill.

They developed feelings for each other, although Soohyuk's wrong way of speaking the language creates a lot of misunderstandings, and are probably the cutest couple I read in 2020. Soo-hyuk has a special way of acting, he is aggressive with everyone and doesn't hesitate against the ones that are not doing their work right in the hospital, which explains why he doesn't have any friends before knowing Yuna.

The story is not just about Soohyuk and Yuna but has side-stories such as the one of Yuna's nephew (which I will say nothing about, you will have to discover it reading the book) and Soohyuk true family, which is not confirmed but I am quite sure of who are them because of their protagonism in the book together with their story, which makes me quite sure of how things happen.

What I love more about this book is that it is not just a romantic comedy but it talks about some issues that people can suffer in their daily life. As a person who is used to see K-Dramas, I have to say that this book reminds me a lot of one of those. I really needed a romantic book with more than just a love book, but a full story that brings the characters together and builds their way of acting and behavior, which makes all the characters really well polished, and this book was it.

The only thing someone could say against it, an opinion I don't share but I can understand, is that the love story happens slowly in comparison with what we are used to, but I found that this helped a lot with getting to know the characters and being able to empathize with them.

To sum up, I enjoyed this book from the beginning until the end, the characters are well written and have an incredible story building behind them. I can't wait to read the next book in the saga, because the ending is not even close to being closed.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishing team for providing me with this read.

I did not enjoy this and ended up not finishing it. The writing style was just not something I could connect with and enjoy, neither were the characters.

I think the story has a lot of potential, especially with its kdrama-ish vibes but the delivery just didn't have it.

It took me a bit to get into this book. I believe it's been translated into English, so I think some of the wording was a bit off and it didn't flow as well as it probably does in the author's native language. Once I got used to the writing style, it was easier to dive into the story.

This centers around Soohyuk, a pediatric doctor who lacks people skills and empathy. He's good with his patients, but is easily frustrated by adults and doesn't sugarcoat anything. I thought he was weird and not my favorite character, though I did appreciate when he told off parents for putting their children in harm's way.

Our other main character is Yuna, the complete opposite of Soohyuk. She's sweet and kind and everyone loves her. She cares deeply for her family, especially her nephew, and makes delicious food that hooks Soohyuk right away. I don't know why she likes him so much, but she does bring out a softer side in him. I think if they really start to date then we'll see some changes in Soohyuk for the better.

The ending was pretty abrupt and I didn't realize there would be a sequel. We didn't really get to see Soohyuk and Yuna date, but they're making definite progress. I also want to know what will happen with Yuna's nephew because I need a happy ending for everyone!

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I appealed so much to the plot as I love kdramas but sadly could not connect to the story and there was a lot of pacing issues. I think it was just too slow for me and it was very hard for me to connect to the characters as well. It was a bit predictable although I truly enjoyed the romantic relationship between the main characters.

Overall if you can get through the slow pacing and enjoy romance then this would be a great choice for you!

I have received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Just the Two of Us was an okay and kind of a cute book. In it, you will meet Yuna and Soohyuk. She is a chef and just loves to cook. Honestly all the dishes she made sounded so freaking good and made me extremely hungry. Oh, and he recently moved to Korea from the US for an exchange program. In other words, he is a doctor.

I'm not going to lie, these two had some cute and then super weird interactions with one another. Or even when they weren't together. It took me to drink my second cup of coffee to realize all of this. So in a way, it kind of baffled me but it also seemed like a lost in translation thing as well.

In the end, I enjoyed it somewhat but it ended kind of abruptly. At least to me. Still enjoyable though and I definitely had food envy while reading it.