baronessekat | 2024 Reading Challenge: A book about K-Pop

Shine by Jessica Jung

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

3.75 stars but not enough for me to bump it up.

Rachel is an American-born Korean who was recruited when she was 11 to join DB Entertainment in Soul, South Korea. DB is an entertainment group who trains and pumps out K-Pop groups and stars. She's been working for 6 years towards the hope that she will be picked to be in the next new group. She has several things going against her:
1) she's American born
2) unlike the others in the training class, she does not live at the training compound and attend the training sessions 7 days a week. Her mother agreed to move to Korea but Rachel has to still attend regular school during the week and thus only train on weekends.
3) She gets massive stage freight when put in front of a camera.
4) Her biggest competitor, Mina, for the lead spot in the group is actively working to get her disqualified and kicked out of the program.

Enter a new complication - Jason Lee. He's the lead singer of DB's current top K-Pop Boy Band and he has the hots for Rachel. The reason for the complication is that there is a strict no dating rule for the girls as long as they are a trainee and under contract, AND she's starting to have feelings for him too.

What's a girl to do when her dreams are within reach but people keep trying to keep them just a hair's breadth away?

+++++

Disclaimers:
1. I am NOT someone who is in to K-Pop.
2. I am a 50 year old white woman.

1 + 2 = I am NOT the demographic this book is geared for.

That being said, of what i would classify as a YA (the main character is 17) book it seemed to hit it's mark for enjoyable escapist real-life fantasy.

Yes, there were some cringe worthy interactions. Yes there were parts of the story that felt a bit forced. Yes I would have liked to have seen more into the darker side of these singing group factories.

But I did like how the girls were all facing sexist, ageist, body-shaming, double standard issues. And I loved the relationship between Rachel and her younger sister.

All in all - for what it was, I liked it.

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