Book Review: Frankly in Love

“Laughter is the music of the deep cosmos connecting all human beings, that says all the things words cannot”

For this review, I will be highlighting David Yoon’s debut novel, Frankly in Love, and yes he is married to YA powerhouse Nicola Yoon. I loved this book for many reasons. I found the characters to be super relatable, and it touched on heavy subjects without making the story overly sad. With that being said, I still cried the entire last chapter. I also enjoyed that while being a cute love story, it was at its core a book about Frank Li trying to find out who is really is. Throughout this book, Yoon managed to convey emotion in a way where if he wanted you to laugh, you laughed, and if he wanted you to cry, you indeed cried. Overall I think this book would be perfect for high school students, as all of the characters are seniors. I also think that with the holidays quickly approaching, this would be a perfect gift for a friend.

Frank Li is a high school senior, who frankly doesn’t know who he is or what he wants to do with his future. Then one day he meets Brit and falls head over heels for her, but she’s a white girl, and his traditional Korean parents would never approve of their relationship. However, one night while at dinner with family friends, he and Joy come up with a crazy idea. Joy, a fellow Korean who is dating a Chinese boy, decides that Frank and herself could pretend to be boyfriend and girlfriend in order to get rid of their parent’s suspicion. Over the next couple of weeks, Joy and Frank maintain their disguise, but when they find themselves at a wedding things change. That night, they realized that over the past few weeks they’ve been sneaking around, they have been slowly falling in love with each other. The following day, Frank and Joy reveal to their former flings their true feelings, and are able to enjoy a whole summer together. Then, their summer ends, and Joy’s going to school at Carnegie Mellon, and Frank is going to Stanford hereby ending their relationship. By the end of the novel, everything has changed within Frank’s social life and family, yet he knows more about who he is now than ever before, and is ready for anything to come.