Romance is a Bonus Book (2019)

An Underrated Rom-Com

I am sorry to say that I have frequently disregarded Romance in a bonus book. Despite it being on my watch list for nearly a year, I have often chosen not to start watching it because it doesn't appear particularly unique from the outside; it seems like an ordinary Rom-Com, infact I did not think it would even be enjoyable. As a result, I have consistently overlooked it.

I must admit that this drama follows the typical Rom-Com formula, incorporating the expected tropes seen in many other Rom-Coms. What sets this show apart is that it executes those tropes perfectly!

If you have an affinity for romance, this show is perfect for you. The cast is exceptional, and I can assure you that by the end of the series, you will develop an emotional connection with these characters. I know I did. It was almost bittersweet when the end came around.

Leggi di Più

Mostly everything is achieved by lies

The story was sweet at the beginning I believe it had potential but when you add up almost every achievement the female lead has done is mostly by lying. She lied to her best friend about living in his house because somehow is more embarrassing to ask for a friend for help than fool him into believing he hired a cleaning lady and live in his house without him knowing at all... Then she gets her job by lying but I guess that's the only way she was ever going to get a job. Also the fact that somehow they tried to put this " a single mom can achieve this" but her daughter appears like 1.5% of the drama and all through video calls? Never visits hers or actually gets to struggle the work life and mom life together so its very unrealistic and does not show the actual struggle cause her daughter is just gone in a high porcentaje of the drama. The romance at least for me felt kind of forced I couldn't match both leads together and ship them as a couple. I enjoyed more the side stories than the actual main story.

Leggi di Più

People loving Books & Each Other

This was a cute, satisfying watch that had a few elements letting it down.

I appreciated that the chemistry between our leads genuinely felt like they were childhood friends and I could sense the warmth between them. On the downside, despite how cute they were, they definitely lacked some romantic chemistry. I never really believed that the FL fell in love with the ML who had more chemistry with his hoobae. Still they are cute together so it’s not a dealbreaker.

The pacing was also definitely off in this drama, with a lot of pointless wheel spinning in the middle leading to like a 100 different plot threads converging & needing to be resolved in only 2 episodes. Everything was wrapped up nicely but felt rushed. Also the big emotional moments of the end weren’t built up well enough imo, we didn’t spend enough on-screen time with it so I just didn’t care.

Still I enjoyed it mostly! Lee Jong Suk plays cute really well. The second FL, Song Hae Rin was by far my favourite character - I had SLS in a big way for her. I wish she & the second ML were the main characters their chemistry was off the charts! (Also she’s a rare example of a nice second fl so good for her). The general team and office antics were always fun and the best parts of the show and though I never particularly cared for Kang Dan I, I felt happy for her successes.

I wish shows would stop labelling every successful solo female in a workplace a “witch”. This was at the beginning and tbh left a sour taste for the entire show’s run. It’s sexist. Don’t do it.

They slightly made up for it by giving me so many different female friendships though which I will ALWAYS love to see! Dan I forms genuine bonds with so many of the women in her workplace and all of them are different depending on the person. We love to see it.

In the end though it was a light watch, super easy to binge and I was left mostly satisfied with the ending. Main lead roles together for the second leads when!!

Leggi di Più

A story about two childhood friends who have a common passion for books and who take a long time to realize that they're each others's home ? YES. So far so good.
I really liked the concept, I also really liked the cast.
The second leads were incredible. Honestly, the background story of each reminded me of the Reply serie which always make sure that each character is well developed and appealing.
BUT... the main couple was a fail for me. Although I liked the mature romance, the way it was brought up and all, I didn't like the energy at all. In my opinion, they didn't manage to convey a romantic feeling and just kept the friendly atmosphere just with a ton of cringe on top of it.
The main guy was way too cheesy, the main girl was a bit bland, the chemistry was not great.
But I still liked it because of the side stories going on, the comedy aspect that was really well made and the cast.

Leggi di Più

Romance is a bonus in life

The story is about the relationship between Kang Dan I and Cha Eun Ho. They met by chance when they were younger and had been close friends for years. Unbeknown to Dan I, Eun Ho harbored feelings for her since he was young. However, he knew that Dan I did not like him back, so he stayed as her little brother figure in her life. He watched over her from afar, as she got married and assumed she had a good life with her husband.

However, it turned out that Dan I had a messy divorce with her husband, who left her for his mistress. She then struggled to find jobs after being unemployed for many years, despite her past work experience and stellar academic scores. Then the story continued on how Dan I learned to stand on her feet back into society, making a career, re-discovering herself, and finding love as a bonus.

Leggi di Più

I finished this drama out of a sense of obligation to the beautiful story the production team had made together more than anything else. While I wrote down many, many quotes in my journal that I found particularly moving and profound, I ultimately didn't connect with the story or the characters as deeply as I had hoped. I was particularly disappointed by the romance, namely how little there was of it in the second half. The way the male lead expresses his feelings for the female lead, initially only to himself out of respect for her marriage, then slowly more openly where she can see, until eventually, declaring his love and making it clear where he stand, I appreciated his delicate and respectful yet earnest and open approach. Their natural transition from friendship to romance was very true to life. But once they're together, the drama really pulls back from giving us more than the lightest hints of romantic interactions between them, and I just don't get why. Why not give us the romance we've been waiting for? Why not give us the romance you've been teasing us with?

Then there's the issue of her being a single mother. There was so much focus on this in the first half, how her husband left her high and dry and she's had a genuinely hard time of it, and you feel genuinely upset on her behalf. But part of me wonders what was the point of the writers focusing so much on this if they were only going to drop this plot point from the story almost completely in the second half. We go so long at one point without any mention of her daughter or her ex-husband that I forgot either existed. Once she starts working at the publishing company and the story begins to focus on her difficulties with being respected and taken seriously at work, she stops behaving like a mother altogether, and it begins to feel somewhat like child abandonment.

There are a number of positive things to say about this drama, of course. I am giving it a 9 overall, after all. First, I found the story and the treatment of it's topics thoughtful and retrospective. When it did address the difficulties of single parenthood, it did so with honesty and kindness. Similarly, it handles the struggles of being a woman re-entering the work-force after a long absence due to motherhood, etc. with a compassionate touch. I don't know that I agree with all of the messaging the drama presents around this topic, but I understood where the drama was coming from and can agree with it's ultimate message that just because you chose to take a step back from the working world to start a family, that doesn't mean you have nothing to offer when you come back.

Ultimately, I think my problem with this drama is simply that I expected something very different. This isn't quite the story I thought it was going to be going in, and that had an impact on my viewing experience. That's not the drama's fault. The writers told the story they wanted to tell, and it's not their responsibility to make that story appeal to absolutely every person who watches it. I was just hoping for something a little different, and it didn't quite meet my expectations. But I can say that I appreciate this drama for what it was hoping to achieve, and that it ultimately did achieve it. And that's really all that matters.

Leggi di Più

A Korean Version of the stateside show "Younger."

Are there changes? Yes!

Some of those changes are strengths versus the original. Some things don't change that probably should have. And some changes do not work so well.

Here our female lead has secretly been divorced for over a year. She is destitute, living in her abandoned home, that has fallen to ruin and is set to be demolished, yes in only a years time, shrug. She sneaks into her best friends house (Our Male Lead) for food and showers while he is at work, and secretly has hired herself to be his housekeeper for some steady income. Her daughter is off at boarding school and draining what little resources our FL has, since her husband has up and disappeared with another woman and left her to raise their daughter on her own. Though, our protagonist is a college educated, certificate wielding, and award wining Copy Editor, not a single company will give her an opportunity because she has been a housewife for the past seven years and is nearing forty. Too old, too educated, and too experienced for entry level work, yet biased against for leaving the work force for a home life and believed too long gone to understand the copy world of today and its markets she is refused substantial middle and management positions. As a wrecking ball finally makes her homeless, our FL is forced into erasing her credentials and past and pretend to be nothing more than a middle-aged high school graduate to land the most basic contract work entry-level gofer position possible. Hey it gives her money, and its at a publishing house, her life's love.

Sounds familiar yes?

While "Younger," as its name suggests, has the FL not only pose as an inexperienced beginner, it ALSO makes her pretend to be in her early 20's as an almost 40 year old. Far fetched, yeah, but the show mostly makes it work. Here, RIABB, recognizes it is unneeded and unrealistic and forgoes this while still covering all the ageist issues in full.

Other changes include taking the Lesbian Life Long Best Friend and the CEO of the Publishing house Love Interest and morphing them together into a single character that is our Chief Editor Male Lead. (Note the Lesbian still gets 2 cameos as a High-end Fashion store owner who used to date our ML. It is important that the show at least nods to this character and also normalizes her Lesbianism by the ML considering South Korea's openly known homophobia.)

By the show doing this character adjoining, it creates a lifetime best friends to lovers story, which is a fan favorite trope amongst Romance lovers. The show knows its audience. It also works well, and allows there to be a lot of screen time with the two leads together in cohabitation, as just like in "Younger," our FL is forced to live with her best friend.

The college student daughter is made mostly irrelevant as a Philippines boarding school living middle-schooler. This is one of those changes I can't get behind. The daughter is used in the beginning to show the financial strapped situation our FL is in, but once she gets the job, the daughter is all but forgotten. The fact that this woman is a mother is left to die on the vine. In fact, that there even is a daughter at all becomes superfluous. It would have been better to have just cut the never met child from the script and made the husband even more of a monster as in he wouldn't let her work as a woman, mother or not. Why not, it would have worked for the purpose of the story just as well and saved us from the odd dangling fruit that is this mostly forgotten daughter in the Philippines.

Our younger hip Brooklyn tattoo artist love interest (Yes the Triangle Lives!) changes into a younger, most sought-after, book cover artist and his beautiful dog. We can not forget this dog guys, its just not gunna happen. The character is tied to the story better and ends up with some secret backstory that deals directly with the publishing house and our ML. This change works well and is perfectly serviceable.

Yes, even the "frenemy" lady boss exists in both incarnations as CEO Go. Here she is displayed more powerfully and much sexier than in "Younger," but as a character I am still not impressed. The dynamic between our FL and CEO Go is exactly the same and I really wish they would have changed this up. Do we really need this to be how we address sisterhood in the workplace? Are we supposed to decide CEO Go really is a good person in the end? Should women expect this relationship, and be okay with this dynamic? Is there really nothing better out there? These questions could create a whole topic of conversation and arguments, but let's just say that for the purpose of the show, this relationship is one of the more complex on display even with its little screen time.

Overall, the show mostly functions as promised. Around episode eight it unfortunately devolves into a generic everyone falls-in-love romance with the entire cast pairing off. (THE ENTIRE CAST!) But, around episode 13 it pulls itself back into the better and stronger original story-lines that were laid at the beginning of the series and follows them through the last 3 episodes. However, because we leave the main story for so long, and because the show tries so hard to be just a typical love story for all, the ending does come on flat. The triumphs don't feel as triumphant as they should. The lows, aren't as low as we went in the beginning of the series, and characters become simply puppets serving the plot and attempting to make us feel warm on the inside as everyone finds happiness in the arms of someone else.

Is it worth your time, I'd say so. It was stronger than a lot of the Kdrama romances I have been sitting through. Is it amazing, perfect, OMG you MUST watch this, best love story ever, you will never be the same, add any other hyperbole or adulation that are carelessly thrown about on peer review sites? No, it is not.

RIABB has warmth, and a message, strong acting, and a great production. It moves steadily and smoothly though its tale without rushing. It is filled with superficial cuteness, and all the typical swooning beats and moments you've come to expect from these types of shows. Yet, it has a unique base story that keeps it apart from the pack. I gave it a 7, 3 1/2 Stars, B grade. Better than average and a solid watch but not great or a must see.

I do want to note, that I did also open a conversation on the MDL discussion board for RIABB about the ML of this drama. There are things that angered me, and issues that I am seeing repeated in Kdrama romances when it comes to the MLs in general. While, by the end RIABB's ML does grow and learn, and ultimately try to be a better man, the first 6 episodes find him doing some very questionable (Not sexual) things when it comes to our FL. It was hard for me to move past these plot points when it comes to ML's character as a noble human being and just put a really large blight on him from my point-of-view. I find him morally questionable, and if this was real life, I would very much be against him. Even if he is smart, handsome, rich, and successful, with a generally amicable personality, and over-all good natured, what he allows to happen and lets his company stand for in the beginning of the series and what he is NOT willing do to for our FL or stand up for what was right, really bothered me and I was unable to let it go. If you want to go a bit more in-depth or offer your own opinion on the matter, look for the discussion above the comments section for RIABB.

Leggi di Più

Like:
- Well directing from Director Lee Jung Hyo, who is acclaimed PD in many dramas
- Screenwriter Jung Hyun Jung wrote exceptional dialogues, some are witty some are poetic. Many beautiful quotes can be retracted from this drama
- Mature love story with grown-up characterizations and relationships
- When the drama introduceds the ML, Cha Eun Ho is described as a "total eye candy" (English sub). Though it's cute, but I am wary that the production exploited Lee Jong Suk's fame and good look as the main pull for the story. I have seen many dramas using one actor/actresses who is good looking as the main draw but then the shows ended up bad. Fortunately this does not happened with this drama. All roles are played well by the respective actors and actresses.
- Actress Lee Na Young was wonderful as Dan Yi who fell into many hardship in love, family, career and personal life and her optimistic attitude and relentless attempt to go back to her feet, initially without Eun Ho's help. A great message for women's self-reliance.
- Actor Lee Jong Suk did a great job acting up the two sides of Cha Eun Ho: calm, wise, cold, refrained in public life and funny, jealous, romantic, caring in personal life.
- ML and FL have a great and natural chemistry during stages of their relationship: starting as best friends of 20 years, to awkwardness during the first stage of romance, finally to real lovers.
- I love the execution of the relationship dynamics between boss and employees and among employees.
- Side stories of other couples are beautiful and are given a good amount of screen times without overwhelm the main love story

Dislike:
- IMO the plot on the mysterious writer is unnecessary. I guess they want to add some mystery/secret/thrill/investigation spice into the show but unfortunately it is not connected to the main story. The revelation of the mysterious writer in the end while the drama is already in anti-climax and viewers already somewhat bored.
- A few episodes to the end the drama loses the steam when Eun Ho and Dan Yi finally get together and Seo Joon and Hae Rin get closer.
- I agree with other reviewers/commenters, what happened to Dan Yi's daughter? Since there are many female viewers definitely a story about a daughter who has to be sent away to the Philippines due to bullying victim at local school demands a story of her own. IMO she's just a filler, better not to have a story of Dan Yi having a daughter.

Leggi di Più

fluffy romcom

I was looking for a drama that gave off the light-hearted romcom feeling but also something that wasn't your typical main leads. This drama was exactly that. I appreciate how they made the female lead so human, it felt more natural and realistic. Like a normal person, she struggles with her job, she has financial obstacles, and she is also incredibly open to new possibilities and meeting new people . Those are some points I really liked out of the FL. As for the ML, quite literally everything about him is pretty ideal, there's hard to find flaws lol.

Onto the plot...the flow was pretty good up until episode 8 ish. It started to feel really slow afterwards...the progression of the relationships between characters was fairly slow and at some point it felt like we only saw the tip of the iceberg. Cha Eunho and Kang Danyi are really good characters on their own however I just felt like the plot was getting lost after a few episodes. I really wanted to hear more about the backgrounds of the side characters and the other editors on the team as well. The chemistry between the two second leads came off pretty strong, almost stronger than when the two main leads were together.

Acting/Cast= 10/10 OST is amazing

Leggi di Più

Decent 1 time watch

Though I liked watching this series , but it has no elements whatsoever to increase its rewatch value !

It was happy-happy series for me , with no negative or annoying characters at all ! There were few that will annoy you for some time like ji-yul , hae-rin and FL as well , but its quite temporary. They are all quite decent and everyday characters , whom you can connect with very well !

That being said , I was not very happy with the work ethics shown here .. The only people who looked and behaved like at work was the ML , Hae-rin and director Go ! I loved how dir Go's character was written , she was strict but not a bitch ! but then I had no sympathies with the FL at all . I mean she lied on her resume , she was bound to face consequences . The work culture is much more stricter than that , you cannot do emotional talks at work ! We have seen people go through much more than she did ! We have seen people working their heart out along with being mothers and taking care of their house hold ! I m not saying that its not tough , but I could not connect with her , since I have seen worst ! Also the obsession over her , at workplace , felt out of the place , I mean she was just a task support contractual employee ! and people were seen missing her , when the fridge was out of juices .. like seriously !! There should have been more real time scenarios , so that the audience could connect and miss her !

Leggi di Più