This was a solid read but coupled with some clunky writing and translation issues, I found it hard to feel engaged and connected to the plot and characters.

Just the Two of Us follows Soohyuk and Yuna as they bond over food and life. Soohyuk, the broody doctor, soon finds comfort in the sweet, caring Yuna and they start to question their feelings for each other.

At first, the premise really intrigued me because it reminded me of Kdramas. I love a good opposites attract trope and I thought I would really love this. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case. The plot was a bit confusing and I found my mind wandering whenever I was reading this, which was not a good sign. However, I did find some moments really sweet and the romance realistic and cute.

Overall, this was a lovely, sweet read if you overlook some of the translation issues - perfect if you're a fan of Kdramas.

Ryu Hyang writes a delightful story about a pediatric ER MD who travels to South Korea in search of his birth parents. Soohyuk is a brilliant doctor who lacks social skills. Raised int he US, he has taken an assignment at a Korean hospital and given himself two years to find his parents. He meets Yuna, also an orphan, who makes box lunches. They become friends and the story evolves from there. Soohyuk has trouble with Korean food and Tuna has difficulty with men and small spaces. Both clearly have some trauma in their pasts.

This book took me a bit to get into. I was not sure if the sometimes awkward phrasing was due to translation issues or was Hyang's showing how Soohyuk could sometimes mangle Korean. Sooyuk becomes immersed in the hospital staff especially with the chief, his estranged wife, and their MD son. This is clearly the first book of a series so many of the issues it raises don't get resolved. It also provides an eye opening take on Korean adoption. Once I became invested in the characters, I really enjoyed it.

I’m finding that the older I get, the less willing I am to waste time on books that are hard to read, poorly edited, or have some scene or character that I thoroughly dislike. In the case of Just the Two of Us, the issue for me was the translation.

The translation made the writing feel choppy and stilted. It was so difficult to read. And our main hero Matt/Soohyuk was very unlikable. Now, whether that was an intrinsic character flaw or a product of the translation, I’ll never know.

Because I quit.

DNF.

Sadly, I did not enjoy this romance. Right from the start the synopsis makes it out to be like such a cute opposites attract romance. However, the translation wasn't the best. The story read really clunky and didn't read like a fluent book but rather like you put a book into Google translate and hoped for the best.
I don't know if the translator writing made the romance lack so much chemistry or if it was like this from the beginning but I couldn't really enjoy a relationship that read so bland.

The whole secret plot of his origin was also not the best and didn't do much for me.

Book Review for Just the Two of Us by Ryu Hyang
Full review for this title can be found at: @fyebooks on Instagram!

I had high hopes for this book after seeing all the positive reviews, but I had to DNF this book. I'm hoping it was the translation, but the writing was so awkward and unnecessarily wordy. I just couldn't continue with it. On the very first page it says "His lips, hidden under stubble that looked like a patch of freshly cut grass," so was it stubble, or was it a few inches long, because stubble and cut grass are surely not the same length.

The plot was also very confusing. I didn't know what to make of the prologue. From the beginning, it sounded like the start of a Korean drama. As in, the male protagonist treated a woman having sex like a dirty bimbo. This woman who he apparently doesn't even remember the name of, had no romantic relationship with him but he allowed her to live with him, which is when she started making moves on him, but then when she's in bed with someone else after his continual rejections, he kicks her out for "cheating" on her? I tried to read a little further but the writing just really took me out of it.

Thank you Net Galley and Poppy Pub for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really liked the premise of this book, and as I started reading I hard a really hard time getting into the cadence of the characters voices. I found the plot confusing and it jumped from place to place and time to time. This might be an issue from the ARC version but I felt confused pretty much the whole way through.

Just the Two of us Book One
By Rui Hyang
This book is a brilliant read you enjoy. I couldn’t put it down. This story is about a chef and a paediatric doctor. This is a beautiful romance you enjoy like friends two lovers. With a slow burn romance. You also just an insight of life from the hospital as he tell us his journey of hospital life. And you get un insight as a chef. This book makes you smile and feel happy and is full of emotion read you follow they journey this book is full of drama you enjoy

I read the first few pages then couldn't go any further. The story and characters make no sense, the writing is mediocre.

It opens on a woman who manipulated the main character into living in his house after he didn't respond to her previous advances. He admits because she just doesn't leave his house and she flirts with him, that they're dating? But he's never tried to sleep with her or anything? Then he comes home to her having sex with some random guy in her room, his guest room, and he tells her she cheated on him? What on earth? Then she goes on a tirade about how crazy he is for never responding to her advances and it's not her fault she "cheated." So dumb. DNF, zero stars though I have to put at least one for the website.

Thanks for the ecopy in exchange for my honest review, netgalley and publisher.

Can I get an amen for all the diversity and representation in the 2021 romance releases I'm seeing! Let's keep holding publishers accountable and asking for these stories to be written, heard, and supported!

Just the Two of Us by Ryu Hyang is the story of a pediatric emergency medicine specialist and Yuna, the chef in charge of making his lunches every day, who also is terrified of men due to drama from her past.

I got strong K-drama vibes from this story, and it was just as sweet and adorable as all K-dramas are, while also touching on deeper and sensitive subjects such as trauma. If K-dramas are your thing, I cannot recommend this book enough. Even if they aren't, I would still recommend this book if you're looking for a sweet, romantic read.

My one complaint with this book was with the ending...and it was significant issue that I took with it. The ending was rather vague and muddled, leaving the reading with an empty and incomplete feeling, which is now how you want a romance to end. If she was positioning the book to be the first in a series then the ending is understandable, however I've yet to see many two-part romances of this nature (sweet, light, and fun) succeed. It will be interesting to see what the romance book community thinks of this one, especially the ending.

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

3.5 stars - rounded up to 4 because it left me overall happy! I received this as an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Originally written in Korean and translated to English, this book was one sweet start to a great kdrama-like plot! The story goes that a Korean-born, American-raised semi-orphaned Soohyuk goes back to Korea to find his birth parents and also to work as an pediatric emergency medicine specialist. He is a fairly antisocial person but the way he is portrayed (i.e. not understanding social cues) makes it seem like he's neurodivergent rather than actually rude. The heroine is Yuma who runs a catering business for making packed lunches and is trying to build a clientele in the hospital that Soohyuk works at. They meet, and an inevitable love story happens.

The good:
Honestly, a very cute read. There is the angst, the past trauma, the slow burn romance is incredible. It's a very charming book, and I normally am not into kdramas but this worked out super well as a written novel. I liked the contrast between the two protagonists and the different competing plotlines. I can't wait for the inevitable side plotline to finally reach its peak when everything is revealed. I am glad that it is spread out over at least a few books so that it's deliciously prolonged! I'm sad that we have to wait for so long for the next book to come out!

The bad:
I feel like I missed a lot of the story because it was lost in translation. I was honestly not sure why Soohyuk was rude a lot of time and I think it's because there are nuances in Korean that were just lost in the English translation and cultural context. The characters would react super dramatically because he said "she feeds me," and I didn't understand how that would lead to everyone assuming they were related.

The medicine was also very off - from pretty obvious things like Soohyuk being the one to start IVs (...what on earth are the nurses doing then?) to wheeling patients to XR (...where are the orderlies?) to running to the operating room (...but he's not a surgeon?) to the insane number of pediatric traumas Seoul apparently has (...it really doesn't as pediatric trauma is RARE in developed countries like Korea and mostly you get kids that are dehydrated from diarrheal illnesses, etc.), to the lack of teaching of resident doctors (...he won't let them practice because...they haven't done the procedure...because...they are residents...and he's in a teaching hospital...to teach...) to obviously the lack of a normal trauma team and assessment of a patient. I tried not to let the medicine bother me too much because it was a drama ...but a giant chunk of the book is about how great Soohyuk is as a doctor, and yet it's so incredibly unrealistic. There is a diagnosis that is very important in the plot, and when I read the symptoms, I rolled my eyes because there are about a dozen other tests and more common diagnoses that would be done, and different specialists that would be involved.

Overall those, if you can ignore those two factors, this is a really happy read and leaves you with a warm fuzzy feeling!

Set in Korea, this book allows us all to begin a journey where the characters are trying to find themselves in a world that feels more foreign than it should. To overcoming a history which has given you fear that is a part of your everyday life, to learning to be better than what the previous generation did to you before and now you have made the decision to be better than they ever were.

I wasn't quite sure about Soohyuk at first, I thought that he was a bit brash towards his peers. However, I have come to realise that in order to get things done in his line of work you must hold your own, especially when it is dealing with a child's life. He is very inspiring in some ways, as everything is about the patient and he calls people out when it is not this way. You have got to hand it to him.

Throughout it all, it is clear that both these characters have been portrayed as being real and breathing and not without their faults. Soohyuk with his unwavering talent to have no filter when it comes to speaking, whether in conversation or giving orders to his staff and Yuna, who clearly is still trying to get over the fear that she once experienced as a young girl and has made her family-orientated to her nephew.

Even though at times I could tell that the translation was sometimes hard to read, I still felt like it was a good story. Very kdrama. Yet I didn't mind that at all because it felt like somehow it was still able to be separate from it. I just wish I was able to find out more about this story, but I know that it won't be a while until some of my questions can be answered.

I think that this is an interesting beginning to what could be a series of books and I for one am invested to see how this particular storyline (relationships between family as well as Soohyuk and Yuna) progresses throughout time.

It is a romantic novel full of emotions that will make you sigh on every page.
On the one hand we have she protagonist who has a very hard past and does not give up in the face of adversity and on the other we have a pediatrician who is a curmudgeon but it is the opposite.
If you are looking for a novel that transmits you the emotions and live a romance that grows little by little, this is the ideal one.
Sweet, fun and full of emotions, you will not be able to stop reading it

I DON'T KNOW. I just... don't know. Perhaps many of my issues with this book land squarely on the translation, but it just seemed choppy and outdated?

The main male romantic lead, Soohyuk, was both underdeveloped and also random huge revelations were just thrown out in such a jarring way. Also, Soohyuk is a huge jerk and I wasn't here for it. Yuna, the female lead and a chef, was much easier to tolerate and the descriptions of food are worth their own star alone. The romance didn't work and there were a lot of cringey moments throughout. I wanted to like it but it's very unlikely I'll be reading the second installment.

Just the Two of Us is a story about taking gradual steps into experiencing new things, two star crossed lovers who are equal parts adorable and passionate with their works. The story starts in Soohyuk's pov wherein he is portrayed as a workaholic who, due to his sensitive stomach, would not eat food made by others. Reading in his pov was very intriguing as I get to read a bit of information here and there regarding his work. Then, later on, Yuna is presented. A girl who, due to a past trauma, collapses when in close vicinity of a guy. I got to admit that seeing them interact made me feel something, to say the least. I liked how understanding they were towards each other's trauma. Their banters were funny and it reminded me a lot of those in Kdrama.

What I didn't like is the translation, in a way. I think I did not fully understand some parts of the story due to this. They were inaccurate (?) and hard to get used to. Furthermore, as much as I enjoyed this one it's going to be a three stars.

This cute story gives me all the K-Drama vibes. It follows the hero Soo hyuk, who is an American doctor who was adopted from Korea to his birth country to find his roots. He has a chance meeting with Yuna who. then begins to cook food for him and slowly warms his heart.

Now this book is truly a K-drama in the sense of it being a slow burn. I've finished this first book and they have barely had any physical contact.


I'm waiting on abeted breath to read book two.

I really enjoyed the premise of this one, but I think the writing came off as too formal, a bit stilted. This is likely, as others said, due to the translation, but it made it difficult for me to really get into.

This is the story of Matt (Soohyuk), who is a specialist in pediatric emergency medicine. He also suffers from OCD and has a childhood that he can’t remember. We follow his story as he leaves his adopted mother to go to his birth country of Korea. His total focus is on his patients and not anything else in his life. He finds a woman who is starting a catering business, who also has issues with panic attacks and difficulty in social situations. They become friends even though Soohyuk is only to be in Korea for 2 years, they fall in love. This book is an easy read, with some funny parts where Soohyuk’s Korean translating causes some trouble with Yuna. The characters the author develops are interesting and make you keep reading and looking forward to book 2.

As a fan of Korean dramas I can't be more than happy with the book.
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From the first chapters I knew where the story was going but I was surprised by the development of each character, the beauty in the structure of the plot and the complexity of feelings expressed in simple actions. Just like the best kdrama, you have to wait until the chapter five to get entangled in the story
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With a melodic prose that slowly fills the story and leads the reader to the long-awaited ending, pleasantly surprising them, making you laugh and smile.
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I really enjoyed this book very much and was hopeful to get to the end of the story but it's not a standalone and I'm going to have to wait for part two.I love both protagonists and I feel that any reader can feel related to any of them.
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Thanks to #NetGalley and POPPYPUB letting me read #JustTheTwoOfUs in exchange for my honest review, i'll be looking forward to the next book

This one is a DNF for me. I saw all the positive reviews but I just could not get into it. Perhaps it is because it was translated from Korean that the writing seemed formal. Also, there was something about the formatting of the book that was off.