eARC Review – So We Meet Again by Suzanne Park

Title: So We Meet Again

Author: Suzanne Park

Publisher: Avon

Publication date: August 3rd, 2021

384 pages

3/5 stars

Goodreads Synopsis

When up-and-coming investment banker Jess Kim is passed over for a promotion, laid off in a virtual meeting, and then overhears why (“she’s already being overpaid anyway for a woman” and “Asians are worker bees, not someone who can drum up new deals”) she delivers an “eff you guys” speech and storms out of the building. Not sure what’s next, she moves back home to Tennessee with her domineering Korean mom, who tries to set her up with her pastor’s son Daniel Choi, an M&A lawyer by day and a successful video game streamer by night. Turns out he’s swoony and smart, not the awkward preacher’s kid she remembers. With his help, Jess launches a Korean cooking YouTube channel focused on easy meal prep for busy professionals.

All is going well until her mom walks on the show mid-live recording and argues about cooking technique. While she hates being berated by her mother in front of the world, it actually works in their favor—they go viral!

Soon her cooking channel becomes an actual media company and brand. When a client is suddenly interested in buying Jess out, she finds herself sitting across the table from the very investment firm she quit not so long ago. But there’s just one other problem: Daniel, the guy whose been helping her and that she’s been falling for, is the firm’s new general counsel.

Review

Sometimes you read a book and you can tell from early on that it is just not going to do it for you. This book was that for me. Overall, there are so many positives to this story – it’s racially diverse with the MC’s being Korean, it falls within the feminist realm with the MC starting her own cooking company after being ousted from her misogynistic Wall Street job. But, there are a lot of missing pieces to the story for me, threads that just weren’t picked up by the end.

I think it’s important to say that I’m not 100% sure if this book can be classified as a romance. It is definitely much more General Fiction with a small romantic subplot, but it is not a true romance. The cover is a bit misleading – matching the illustrated cover tread in true romance novels in recent years. I was personally disappointed that the romance wasn’t a bigger player after this book was classified as a romance on Netgalley.

Whereas this book was not for me, I won’t say I didn’t enjoy parts of the story. I just finished it and felt underwhelmed, where I would normally want to feel more positively – instead of neutrally. I felt similarly with another of the author’s books, so I may just not jive with her writing style, which happens! I also know I generally prefer more romance stories rather than General Fiction, which definitely played a role here.

Thank you to Avon and Netgalley for an early copy in exchange for an honest review.

Happy reading, folks!