She joins art club to be near him, and he just wanders off.
Given the K-drama influence, I’m willing to overlook how unrealistic that might be (or how a girl doing that doesn’t send the guy running in the opposite direction.) The thing is, Luca never seems interested in Desi. Desi even goes so far as to try and stage a car wreck so she and Luca can spend more time around each other. The book lost me because I’m not the biggest fan of the storyline where the girl obsessively pursues the guy at all costs. Goo’s authorial voice is fantastic, and I was drawn in by the fast pace of the story and Desi’s clearly defined character. She makes it her goal to win him over using the K-drama steps. He is handsome and into art and other than that, is mostly a mystery to Desi. She has the perfect target for the plan, a new student named Luca. Her past attempts at teenage love have all been disastrous, and she thinks her steps will guide her to the perfect happy ending. She creates K-drama steps for finding love: a tragic backstory, get in a life-threatening situation, and share the perfect kiss. In I Believe in a Thing Called Love, Desi decides she will watch K-dramas and try to glean a life plan from the formula. Much like a romance novel, you know a happy ending is coming and that’s the payoff for these beleaguered characters. There is something about the formulaic silliness that draws you in, though. Over the course of ten to twenty-four hour-long episodes, the same poor high school girl could get kidnapped, suffer from amnesia, take an exotic vacation, and still have to show up to her four part-time jobs.
They over the top, outrageous, and not at all reflections of real life. If you aren’t familiar with K-dramas, I would describe them as Korean language soap operas. Unfortunately, I Believe in a Thing Called Love did not have the same engrossing quality as the shows themselves. For a while, they were all I wanted to watch, and when I heard that Maurene Goo had a Young Adult book coming out that featured K-dramas, I was instantly sold. I would stay up late watching them, foregoing sleep for one more episode.
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