Thread by @hoshontomba

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Wish Upon a K-Star by Kat Cho is one of the cutest books I’ve read in a long while, with Once Upon a K-Prom being the last. I would call this a true YA fiction!

⋆｡°✩ 4.5/5 Stars ✩°｡⋆

Grab your copy: amzn.to/4pvRxo4

Fans of The Summer I Turned Pretty looking for their next favorite, this is for you! #TheSummerITurnedPretty #TSITP

With as much love as I had for this book, I cannot wait to read Gods & Comics when it releases on my birthday next year! Let’s get into it ⬇️

I picked this up in July simply because it was Kat Cho and decided my drive to and from Colorado was the perfect time to read it. For a bulk of the book, it was a read I didn’t want to put down unless it was my turn to drive!

There’s a perfect balance of suspenseful drama and romance that helps immerse the reader. Despite having aphantasia (an inability to form mental images) I found this read to be one I could envision as if I was watching it unfold onscreen.

Netflix or Amazon Prime could pick this book up a la Jenny Han and make something addictingly adorable, I fear. Hyeri as a main character was very relatable; the book did well to touch on mental health, family issues, and the fear of failure without seeming stilted.

The friends-to-lovers and fake marriage tropes worked so well with this and brought everything I love in a K-Drama to the page.

To go deeper into some of the themes addressed in this book, bullying/cyberbullying, stalking, extreme pressure to be perfect, parental neglect…

…almost crippling anxiety, and grappling with feelings of inadequacy as they relate to love are all addressed in ways that aid the plot. In our modern world, bullying and cyberbullying are major issues that we somehow both talk about and ignore.

Kat Cho’s depiction of this behavior and the harm it can cause to the victim and others in orbit was astounding. The elements of stalking and anxiety tie right into this theme, so I would say it’s a pretty major one here.

You’ll find as the drama of it all unfolds that your feelings about the characters develop as the book goes on and learn not to judge a book by its cover, so to speak.

Korean language is included in the book in a way that feels completely natural and teaches the reader!

Artwork: Absolutely gorgeous cover art by Velinxi. I’m unsure if this artist also did the art on the inside of the dust jacket (I suspect so) but it was equally gorgeous! I’m not a huge fan of posters and framing book or video game covers, but this one has me rethinking that.

Dual POV: I’m not the biggest fan & unless I’m really enticed by marketing or reader response, I tend to stray from these. For this book, though, I really did enjoy it! You get Hyeri’s POV in first person, and then flashes of Minseok’s POV in third person which I found helpful.

Format: My favorite part was the creative formatting used in conjunction with the dual POV. The “Idol Profiles” and news reports added a lot to the immersive nature.

Spice: There are sweet romantic moments – maybe a few where one would say “ooh la la”, but then stay PG. This is something you’d find in a school library, but to me that made it perfect. It is a middle grade romance published by Disney so don’t let the lack of spice deter you!

(YA and New Adult are two different genres despite what BookTok and Bookstagram might lead you to believe. I want to stress this very hard. And not in *that* way you dirty birds!)

Ultimately, it did feel like something was missing. Most of the time I will rate out at a full 5 Stars when I enjoy a book or can agree it was a great fit for its genre because I don’t have a specific criteria like many readers with English degrees/heavy critique experience.

But this can feel unfair when I really enjoyed a book but wouldn’t rank it alongside some of the other’s I’ve given a high rating to. On the other hand, to give this a 4 Star seems too low so I would give this a 9/10 or 4.5/5 in this instance.

This book is part of Kat Cho’s “K-Verse” series, so it doesn’t pick up where K-Prom left off and I suspect any future books in this world won’t pick up where K-Star left off.

The short Epilogue sets you up to want a continuation of Hyeri’s story in a time where people are divided on wanting prequels/sequels and wanting standalone media.

There was a fair bit of character development but because of the storytelling, we’re left on an ending where it feels like we’re just hitting the crest of something more.

I do think that the length and flow may be under constraints of what Disney typically publishes, so on that note I do think it was phenomenal despite that Give-Me-Part-2 feeling.

@threadreaderapp Unroll, please :)