book of the week

the art of falling

S Y N O P S I S

Somi Han and Joshua Kang had been best friends for as long as anyone could remember (it had really only been about five years, but those five years felt a bit like forever). But that was until Joshua's brother, Jack, climbed into his car after a night of drinking, early New Year's morning, and drove home, striking and killing Sungmin Han, Somi's seventeen-year-old brother, at the crossroads of their neighborhood.

A year and a half later, Somi is just beginning to put her life back together. Hoping to leave the tragic memories behind, she moves into the city for the summer—an attempt to start fresh.

Only, it's hard to start fresh when your next door neighbor turns out to be a tall, dark, and handsome, well, ex-best friend—Joshua Kang.

T H O U G H T S

I’m a sucker for Asian romance novels. I freely admit to it.

There’s just not enough of them out there, and it’s so hard to find the gems that really stand out from a crowd.

The Art of Falling by EmSlough is one of them, spinning the cliché of best-friends-to-lovers into a story that will simultaneously make you laugh, cry, and want to tear your heart out.

It’s an absolutely amazing book with amazing characters.

Somi Han may not be the most likable character when you first meet her. She’s still recovering from her brother’s death, still trying to put her life back together, and still stuck with her family after years of grief. Yet she’s clearly the heroine---not in a badass sword-slinging kind of way, but in her quiet ability to release the burden of her past and finally let herself be alive. Somewhere in the tween chapters, a buzzed character says that she’ll drive and Somi panics, lashing out at her newly found group of friends. But she’s our heroine, after all, and she gradually lets them see the truth of what happened to her, allowing them to put her back together despite her accustomed grief.

Enter Joshua Kang, dreamboat. Somi’s ex-best friend.

To the world saying that we need more Asian male leads, Joshua Kang is the solution---the ultimate golden boy, headed for a fashion design career that's prepared to rocket off. But he has his flaws, too---like Somi, he’s unwilling to tell anyone about what really happened on that night.

Part of what makes this story so intriguing is Joshua’s apparent perfection. He’s polite, kind, and good; he’s the kind of boy your parents would love. Somi sees through that, but that’s a whole other package of soju we don’t need to get into. He’s too perfect, and that’s his facade---a mask to hide everything inside.

Speaking of soju, that’s another fantastic aspect of the book---the embracement of Asian culture. Somi and Joshua reconnect over Korean food, both longing for the flavors of home and the past and the memories of what was before. Unlike some novels, where characters refuse to accept their heritage, these two can’t live without it---it’s an inherent part of them, just as it is for the Korean friends that they accumulate. It’s because of this similarity and sense of belonging that Somi is able to open up to everyone, and it’s because of that shared desire of a nostalgia of a time long gone that Somi and Joshua decide to head back to square one.

However, as much as he and Somi are alike, they are just as much opposites---she wears her heart on her sleeve, while he hides it away.

But according to the laws of science, two objects at the same height, even though they may have different weights, will hit the ground at the same time.

And in The Art of Falling, they certainly do.

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written by teamiyazaki
edited by xohrats