Cute, but not super memorable

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I was kind of surprised that Seoulmates had a really strong start but a mediocre finish. Usually it's the other way around?? I was really liking it then I was just so bored and stopped wanting to listen to the audiobook :-(

Hannah is dating Nate, and planning a great summer with him, when he dumps her. Just when her summer couldn't get worse, her ex best friend, Jacob, is coming to stay with her family for the summer from Korea. Jacob moved to Korea about 3 years ago, he and Hannah got in a big fight, then Jacob went on to become a k-drama star.

Hannah is a generally grumpy soul. She doesn't embrace her Korean heritage much, doesn't Nate's hype for k-pop and k-dramas, and when she sees Nate moving on to another Korean girl, she wants to win him back even though she realizes he may be kind of fetishizing girls like her.

Jacob's dad died a few years back, and his family literally stayed in Korea after flying there for his dad's funeral because they didn't have money to get home. He's been poor, and now he's financially stable but controlled in every way by his publicist, agency, etc

Hannah is avoiding Jacob, but he catches her lying to her mom, so blackmails her into hanging out with him. They become friends again very quickly, which is nice, they just fall back into it, and then they become more.

The main relationship drama is when she talks to her ex still, not really in a cheating way, but she doesn't call the stuff off with him until well into her and Jacob's relationship. Their first kiss was literally to make Nate jealous at least in part but then they went forward from it as if it was a real kiss and started dating idk

There's also drama about them wondering what they'll do when Jacob goes back to Korea, since him leaving for Korea messed them up in the first place, and then there's outside pressure from the film studio folks or w/e trying to fix Jacob's image from being with a girl that isn't his coworker that the publicists are trying to fan service him with

I will say that they have a lot of good discussions and are communicative with one another, and it was nice to see in YA. I was just bored by their relationship, I think maybe because the pacing was off? They got together about halfway into the book give or take and the rest of the book was just little dramas after little dramas wiggling their way into their relationship

Their moms were really cute, and overall I do think teens will really like this book. There was just something missing in the relationship for me that kept me from being fully sucked in, but I liked the conversations to be had in this book and it's very cute overall.