⭐️⭐️⭐️.75

Welcome to Survivor: Corporate Hell—where the coffee’s cold and your coworkers hate you 📺☕️

Miye Lee, author of the delightfully strange Dallergut Dream Department Store that I gave five stars to, is back. Instead of your dreams, this time, she’s coming for your 9-to-5 soul. Break Room, translated by Sandy Jooson Lee, is a psychological office drama wrapped in a game show, duct-taped with paranoia, and delivered straight to your anxiety-filled inbox. And I devoured it in one sitting like it was a tray of cupcakes left in the break room with no note.

The setup? A bunch of allegedly “toxic” office workers are put on a reality TV show to determine who’s the worst. Think The Office meets Among Us, but with more guilt, less HR oversight, and a healthy dose of existential dread. One of the contestants is secretly a mole, planted by the producers to sabotage the group. But here’s the real kicker: everyone was nominated by their coworkers as the “office villain.” So yes—every single person here is someone whose passive-aggressive email threads have caused at least one therapy session.

And as the story unfolds, the real game isn’t “who’s the mole?”, it’s “oh no, am I the villain?”
Spoiler: Yes. Maybe. Depends on who you ask. And how much you microwave fish in a shared kitchen.
This little novella punches way above its word count. It’s fast, sharp, and thought-provoking. Watching alliances form and crumble like someone brought up a missed deadline during team lunch was intense. What starts as a whodunnit turns into a who-am-I, and honestly, that’s way more terrifying.

Do I wish we got a little more character depth? Absolutely But at the same time, the brisk pace and limited backstory kind of work. We don’t get deep dives—we get snap judgments, just like in a real office. You’ll find yourself judging characters the way you judge the guy who steals your yogurt from the fridge. Harshly. And without knowing his tragic backstory.

10/10 would not emotionally outlive this game show, I am definitely a tea-slurping, egg sandwich bringing, once-heaved-into-a-bin-in-front-of-everyone type of work colleague, but would absolutely binge-watch this on television.

I loved the Dallergut books so I was interested in reading a different genre by the same author. I enjoyed this novella a lot. The idea of a reality tv show based around the most irritating colleagues is intriguing and slightly unsettling. Following Ice Cube navigating his way through realisations about the other contestants, what others think of him and the shows (or society's) unspoken rules was so good. I was almost disappointed it wasn't longer but after finishing I think a novella format allowed the concept to be explored without the idea getting tired.

Break Room is a novella about a group of people who go on a game show about office drama, and learn maybe more than they'd want about what it means to be perceived by others. A group of people are selected to take part in a new game show, with the twist that they've all been nominated by others in their respective offices for having the worst habits in the break room. The game is simple: they work as usual, using the break room as needed, but one person is a mole, planted by the show, and their job is to try and work out who it is.

The novel is told from the perspective of one of the participants, Ice Cube, and it is fascinating to watch how his mindset changes throughout the show's time and the kinds of paranoia he has. In particular, his discovery of what other people think about his break room habits is powerful and a bit heartbreaking, really highlighting how people have such different ideas about actions they take or others take. As the book is a novella, it is really only a glimpse into what happens and I imagine some people will be frustrated to not be able to delve deeper, but it is a gripping story that says a lot about people's behaviour and psychology.

Have you ever been disgusted by the villainous behaviours of the people around you? Then I've got good news to you. This book is all about everyday villainy, and it's also short and sweet.
Break Room was very different from anything I've read before, and as someone who reads a fair bit, I'm saying that as a compliment!
It was a quick and engaging reading experience that combined the mundane (office workers in a break room) and the bizarre (it's not actually a break room -- it's a reality show set, and one of them is a mole). The main character was an intriguing unreliable narrator, that I feel like some people would hate and some others would feel empathy for (I was somewhat mixed about him, but I definitely liked him as a character).
All in all, a fantastic experience! Would recommend to anyone who's feeling like they need some brainrot in book form (and, again, I'm saying this as a compliment! It's very well written and the translation is fantastic, but it being a reality show made it easy on my melty post-work brain).
I'm curious to read more books by Miye Lee

A really fascinating look at office culture, particularly how we treat and perceive our colleagues who we don't know on a personal level. Break Room is compulsive and so very readable. As much as I wanted more, I think the length makes is punchy and leaves it up to the reader to consider how their kind actions might be misconstrued and how they come across in general to strangers. Really loved the essays from the author and translator bookending the novel too.

So interesting, I wish it were longer and more detailed, so we could get to know more about these participants. From the "ice cube" perspective, we try to unravel the program and the people. We question the narrator and his way of thinking. I loved it; I wanted to experience more of this experiment.

A great short story from a new favourite author. At first glance this novella seems a world a way from the Dallergut duology, and in some ways it was (literally). But although this was based in reality, on a reality show, Miye Lee has again written a story that makes you think about your place in the world, this time your perspective and how others' perspective of you and the world may differ.
I read this in one sitting and would recommend this to anyone wanting a short, fun but also interesting read.

This story takes on the familiar trope of a reality show, where contestants vie for supremacy - in this case, to find out which of them is a mole, placed amongst them by the producers.

The twist, however comes with the realisation that each competitor's opportunity to take part has been the result of their coworkers voting them the person they would most like to see leaving the workplace!

Razor sharp and original, this Korean novella gets 3.5 stars.

this one made me think about a lot of things…. and idk if i liked that LOL i liked the book a lot but it put a lot of things into perspective for me. if you hate being perceived consider this a warning. i would genuinely hate nothing more than to be a contestant on this show. not only would i know how negatively i was perceived by my coworkers, but then continue to allow millions of other people to know about that and perceive me in a similar way…. i couldn’t. i really couldn’t. i genuinely hate being perceived and doing that show would be like a personal hell for me. the whole time i would be freaking out and thinking about everything i’ve done up to that point that would make more than one person nominate me…… no thank you.

on the outside, the game seems to be somewhat lighthearted about them finding the mole who would be considered “the normal one.” it was all fun in games until he (and i) realized it wasn’t just a game. i felt so bad for him because he genuinely thought he was doing something nice for his coworkers but instead they found it strange and were uncomfortable. he’d thought that would be something positive about him and not something negative. monologue saying “once you’ve lost too many points, no amount of extra points will make you catch up” ….. i had to turn off my phone. LIKE DONT TELL ME THAT WHILE IM QUESTIONING MY EXISTENCE PLS! but seeing it change from “i want to find the mole” to “i hope someone thinks im the mole” was so disheartening..

Firstly thank you for this ARC!

This short story was very interesting to me as I presumed the whole point to the book would be focused on the “mole” reveal, however it wasn’t. Instead the story showed us glimpses into what I believe to be a big issue in Korean society which is how others perceive us.

I would’ve loved for this book to be a little bit longer to fully flesh out the tv show and each contestant, but I think more often than not Korean books are short and sweet.

Overall I enjoyed the concept and how it was executed for how short the book was!
3.75 stars

Man, I’m so happy I’m still working from home and don’t have to share communal space with my colleagues. This is a short novella – a reality show about the “villains” you encounter in your office space. This premise was very intriguing to me, mostly because it’s about a reality show, but it was so short, I mean the show, not the book itself. The duration of this show is only a work week and the participants have to find out who amongst them is the mole. That aspect was weird enough, but the rules are not clear not only for us as readers, but to the participants as well.
This book left me with mixed feelings, mostly because I enjoyed it and at the same time I was a bit disappointed. I expected more drama and twists, but the characters barely communicated with each other, almost never spoke to one another, the days flew by so fast and the reveal was so lackluster, it was like nothing really happened at all. Although I felt a lot of sympathy towards our MC and one of the other people on that show, most of these people were really boring and I would probably dislike them as well if they were my colleagues. There was a fun aspect about the hints our MC gets about the others, but we had only his POV and were basically like viewing only a small portion of that show, that was summarized at the end for us in a very dry manner.
There is an underling theme of loneliness and social awkwardness, as well as the very struggle to fit and be appreciated by others. It makes you delve into the fact that maybe you’ll never know what actually other people think of you and why some people will dislike you and make fun of you. No matter if you’re perfect and kind, and thoughtful and helpful, there always will be someone that will misunderstand you and dislike you for reasons unknown. 3.5 stars
Thank you to NetGalley and Headline | Wildfire for granting me the wish to read this ARC.