Romance is a Bonus Book

SPOILER WARNING: DO NOT READ IF YOU STILL PLAN ON WATCHING THIS SERIES OR HAVEN’T FINISHED IT YET!!

Romance is a Bonus Book
(로맨스는 별책부록 / Romaenseuneun Byeolchaekburok)
MyDramaList rating: 9.5/10

Hey everyone! I’m back with another review! I know it hasn’t been that long since my last one, but honestly I couldn’t wait to start this one, it’s been on my list ever since I knew it existed and on the one hand I couldn’t wait to finish it but on the other hand I also didn’t want to rush through it because I wanted to enjoy every single moment of it.
I will start right away by saying that this is one of the best dramas I’ve seen in a long while. It’s definitely going on my favorites list. That’s why I want to dedicate this review to discussing all the feelings that went through me and not just stick to an elaborate summary, because you just have to watch it.

I’m also kind of shocked that this is actually my first review about a Lee Jong Suk drama. Lee Jong Suk is one of my favorite actors and by principle, I watch all of his dramas. I know that he picks his dramas out very carefully and I honestly found everything I’ve seen of him extremely good.
It has been a long time since I watched a drama with him, so I was really happy to see him again, as soon as he appeared on screen I went like ‘OMG I MISSED HIM SO MUCH!!’, haha. I believe While You Were Sleeping was the last one I saw with him and that was also way before I started writing reviews. A shame, maybe I will watch it again some day so I can still write a review about it, haha. Up until now I’ve watched 9 of his dramas and 2 where he appearead as a cameo, so I can’t say I saw all of his work, but he’s such a steady and consistently good actor, and all his dramas are also so consistently good that I’m never worried about not liking something he does.

Romance is a Bonus Book is a 16-episode drama (on Netflix) about 37-year old Kang Dan Yi (played by Lee Na Young). She’s a divorcée with a young daughter that studies abroad and she’s having a hard time finding work after taking a 7-year career break to raise her child. In the meantime, her husband left her for someone else and all the care for her daughter has fallen on her shoulders. She keeps being rejected because it’s so hard to get back into her old field of expertise after such a long break, no one wants to give her a chance. The only person on her side is Cha Eun Ho (played by Lee Jong Suk). These two have been together since they were kids. Dan Yi saved Eun Ho’s life when they were little and they’ve stuck together ever since.
However, since Dan Yi got married and things started going downhill in her marriage, she hasn’t been entrusting Eun Ho with her situation that much.
Eun Ho, now a famous writer turned chief editor at a well-known book publishing company, is also busy with work and isn’t aware of the fact that Dan Yi’s situation is so bad. She’s unemployed, and even becomes homeless.
She’s even pretending to be Eun Ho’s housekeeper when he isn’t home, claiming to him that it’s someone she recommended, but in secret she starts living at his house. When the truth is eventually revealed, they agree that she can stay for six months. In the meantime, Dan Yi finds that they’re looking for employees at Eun Ho’s company and applies there, since they mention they don’t require experience. Dan Yi, who used to work in advertising at a big advertising company, burns her former credentials to start anew and applies as a contract employee for Gyeoroo Book Publishing, claiming she’s a high school graduate.
She gets hired and in a short period of time manages to win everyone’s hearts with her humble enthusiasm and thorough work attitude. She becomes a person everyone can rely on.
In the meantime, Eun Ho’s real feelings towards her become stronger. He has liked her for a long time, but living with her and becoming more and more involved in her life only intensifies those feelings.
Dan Yi initially has a special encounter with a charming man that lives in the same neighborhood. They keep meeting by coincidence and it almost seems fate-like. This person turns out to be Ji Seo Joon (played by Ui Ha Joon), a famous book designer who eventually comes to work together with Gyeoroo as well. On Eun Ho’s side, there’s his colleague and junior Song Hae Rin (played by Jung Yoo Jin), who has had a major crush on him for 3 years.
The series depict the lives of several employees at Gyeoroo, it depicts a lot of (daily) life struggles that everyone goes through and most importantly, it depicts a lot of relationships between different people. All this in combination with the interesting back theme of books and working in the world of book publishing.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m always intrigued by dramas and stories that give a glimpse into the world of a specific industry or field that I’m not familiar with. I learned so much about book publishing through this drama, there were so many aspects of it I never knew anything about. I didn’t even know that book designers were a thing, like, people that specialize in designing book covers. And about what kind of things happen in editing and publishing a book and how books are chosen by publishing companies. It was great to watch a series that showed a group of people all sharing this passion for books, how enthusiastic everyone would get when they would get positive reviews and requests for more print orders. Just watching the atmosphere in this company made me want to work there, lol. I think it’s really nice when people end up working somewhere they can express their love or passion for something so well. I still need to find this place for myself, haha.

Honestly, where do I start? I don’t think I have any negative criticism about this drama. Let me try and phrase everything I felt while watching this, I will do my best.
I have to start with the cast. Because the cast is what made this series for me in the first place. To be honest, I liked everyone. There were some actors in it that I hadn’t seen in a long time that I really liked. I remember watching the scene where the founding members/executives of Gyeoroo were introduced one by one, where they came in for the meeting one by one, and I was like ‘OMG YES THIS GUY’ and ‘AAH YES I LOVE HER’. The way of introducing the characters was really addictive.
The Gyeoroo founding members consisted of:
1. CEO Kim Jae Min (played by Kim Tae Woo). I have seen one drama with him, God’s Gift -14 Days-, where he wasn’t a really sympathetic character (the main character’s husband), but I still kind of liked him, I think. I think he has a really nice face for some reason. Anyways, it was really nice to see him as such an extra character here, he showed a very approachable and funny side of his acting and I couldn’t help but love him from the start. CEO Kim was sometimes like a child, when he couldn’t get his way, but once it was revealed that he was also a single father (his wife passed away) and he was a really respectable president, his character just got this extra depth and credibility.
2. Director Ms. Go Yoo Seon (played by Kim Yoo Mi), the ‘ice queen’ or ‘evil witch’ that everyone feared/looked up to in the beginning. Kim Yoo Mi is one of the actresses in this drama that were new to me, I hadn’t seen any of her dramas before. But what I really liked about her is that her character was so well-written. Because in the beginning, she seems like this cold, mean person, also when it seems like she takes Dan Yi’s advertising proposal and presents it at the meeting as her own. But we find out about her life, how she ran away from her own wedding and how she’s actually quite lonely. I really love that they put so much thought and backstory in every character’s development. It really makes you grow to love every single one of them.
3. Editing Team’s Mr. Bong Ji Hong (played by Jo Han Chul). The ‘OMG YES THIS GUY’ I mentioned earlier was for him. I love this actor. I’ve seen some really hysterical roles of him, which were hilarious, but he showed such a serious and sincere style of acting in this drama, he showed emotion, he cried, he screamed, all the while still maintaining his humoristic side. I was really impressed with his acting in this drama.
His character really popped out when it was revealed that he was married to one of his co-workers (I’ll get to her after this) and they got divorced and they had to deal with all the awkward situations of still being colleagues. He had a really hard time getting used to this, more than she did, and he was also the person who couldn’t seem to move on as fast as she could. He also had his own little arc where he tried to get the company to publish poetry and he had to fight really hard for this. I really liked his character.
4. Marketing Team’s Ms. Seo Young Ah (played by Kim Sun Young). The ‘AAH YES I LOVE HER’ was for her. I haven’t even seen that many of her dramas (but she is in some that are still on my to-watch list), but even with the few roles I’ve seen of her, I love her. In this drama too, she was amazing. Showing both a humoristic side and a mature, tortured side, she was so human and so realistic. She was married to Mr. Bong but got divorced, and from her side, we only see how happy she is with this decision. She’s free, she feels so good, no regrets. So the contrast between the two of them was really powerful. I specifically liked the scenes where we got to see her vulnerability (the scene with the three women crying over their marriage stories after clubbing and the scene where she had to stay with her child at the hospital – I’ll elaborate on these later).

So yeah, the founding members, including Eun Ho, were all really interesting individual characters that all brought something different and indispensible to the story. Their different energies all added something and they made a really nice dynamic within the company.
When you get to know everyone better, you see more and more sides to everyone and for example, while Ms. Go may have been a less sympathetic character in the beginning, I really grew to love her in the end, because she also started opening herself up and giving herself new chances to enjoy life and help others.

And then there were some other interesting and important side characters.
First of all, Park Hoon and Oh Ji Yul. These two were hired by Gyeoroo at the same time as Dan Yi and they kind of stuck together even though they were all in different teams. Dan Yi was admitted to the Task Support Team, Park Hoon to the Marketing Team and Ji Yul to Editing.
Park Hoon (played by Kang Ki Doong) is an young and very passionate (and very extra) individual, who I believe has a very optimistic mindset. He isn’t considerate to be very handsome or impressive, but he keeps going for what he wants, he is very diligent in his work.
I haven’t seen this actor in so long!! Like, he was one of the actors where I went ‘OMG HIM!! Where has he been??’ I think Tomorrow With You is the last thing I remember him from… But I saw on DramaWiki that he has been quite active and he’s also in a few dramas that are on my to-watch list.
Anyway, I LOVED him in this drama. He was hilarious. But the great thing about the funny characters in this series is that they don’t become comic relief. I mean, okay, they are, but their characters aren’t limited to being the comic relief. He still had a story, he was still a person that had to find his way in the world, and that made it even more enjoyable to watch his performance. Especially when he gets involved in Ji Yul’s world. I really loved how seriously he took his role as Ji Yul’s boyfriend when her mom came to visit him to check who he was, lol, he got so intense.
Oh Ji Yul (played by Park Gyu Young) is a young girl who has never had to do anything by herself. Her mother is rich and has given her anything she ever wanted. Her mother is also still very VERY involved with how she lives her life and buys her stuff for every occasion. She hasn’t allowed her daughter to start living on her own, even giving the impression she doesn’t believe Ji Yul would be able to live on her own without her financial support. Her mother also always introduces people to her for blind dates and always gets involved with people Ji Yul hangs out with or dates, no one is ever good enough if she hasn’t picked them out herself. Ji Yul is a very naive and clueless girl, quite dependent on her mother, and she initially isn’t even that interested in books, it’s just the only company that wanted to hire her. But once she arrives at Gyeoroo under the strict supervision of Song Hae Rin, she is forced to get out of her comfy chair, out of her lazy attitude. And after making a crucial mistake and being forced to make up for it, she starts changing her attitude towards work, starts working very hard, reads up on new manuscripts.
Honestly, I loved the dynamic between Park Hoon and Oh Ji Yul so much. They were like the two people who always stuck together and who always had crazy things going on together, who cheered each other up. Park Hoon was the only one who came to help Ji Yul when she had to fix her mistake (paste stickers in 5,000 book copies because she messed up the author’s bio).
I really enjoyed watching their scenes together, they were so extra and always cheered me up. Their scenes were like pallet cleansers after other more serious or emotional scenes, fore example, and I think it was really necessary for them to be there. They added to the already interesting cast with interesting characters of their own. I didn’t know Ji Yul’s actress, but I really liked her acting, Ji Yul was this awkward and derpy person but she still maintained her confidence and really grew as a person throughout the story.

As I mentioned, I’ve seen a lot of Lee Jong Suk, and he always keeps surprising and inspiring me as an actor. In this drama too, his character wasn’t even that particularly extra or special or anything, but he always manages to give his characters a certain charm. Maybe I’m just a bit biased, but he can do very little wrong. I’ve never been disappointed by his acting before. Eun Ho seemed like a very simple person, he doesn’t have a lot of people around him and it’s clear that Dan Yi is the most important to him. Ever since she saved his life (she pushed him away from an approaching car and got hit in his place, breaking both arms and legs), he has been with her and he’s the closest thing to family that he has. He has a gift and he has managed to get a job where he can develop that gift even further.
Even though I did sometimes get some aloof vibes from him in the beginning, also when it was discussed that he kept breaking up with his girlfriends and showing so little interest in anyone else, he’s always the warmest person ever to Dan Yi.
Besides the acting and the substantive side, I also just wish to mention that he was serving some serious looks in this series. Apart from the suits and the fancy coats, his comfy house looks with the woolly sweaters and the fluffy hair… It just made me want to hug him, haha.
I didn’t know actress Lee Na Young, I don’t believe I’ve seen any of her dramas but she has a familiar face for some reason. When checking DramaWiki, I found out she’s been doing more movies than dramas.
(The last drama she did before this one was in 2010!)
Anyway, I think she was very well-casted for the role. Also appearance-wise, because you had to be able to tell she was older, but it still didn’t feel weird for her to be with Eun Ho. Their natural chemistry together just made up for it all. I really liked Dan Yi’s character. She was really rational, really realistic and down-to-earth. You could tell from her face that she was a mature adult woman who had been through a lot, but still managed to keep smiling and work hard. She cared a lot about her daughter and really wanted to be a good mother to her, even though that meant smiling through her tears. The scene where she had a video call with her daughter just after being rejected for a job again (I think?) was really touching. She had really warm expressions on her face towards the people she cared about. She was a very relatable character, I think, and was smart enough. It wasn’t weird that she managed to become such an indispensable person at Gyeoroo in such a short time.
I liked that, when she found out about Eun Ho’s true feelings for her, she was a little surprised at first, but she never made an issue about it. She never went like ‘omg no, we can’t, what will people think, and what about our age gap!’ or something like that. She just really followed her feelings and those brought her to Eun Ho quite naturally. She wasn’t awkward when he kissed her, she didn’t pull back or anything, she just hugged him a little tighter than before. They were so natural as a couple, it was really lovely.

I mentioned something about how this drama depicted a lot of human relationships. Let me just go over a few of them.
First of all, of course, Dan Yi and Eun Ho. What I thought was interesting (I actually wrote notes while watching for the first time), was that their relationship is kind of given away in the intro. If the intro wasn’t there, when the drama started, I had no idea what kind of relationship they had. But the intro already gives away that it’s about this younger boy and a slightly older girl who met when they were kids and went through a lot together and who would eventually ‘open up a new book about each other’. So when we enter the first scene, a flashback to when Dan Yi gets married, we already know at least that they are close. We don’t exactly know in what way, but we can assume that it’s like a close noona-dongsaeng relationship. Even in each other’s phones, they have saved each other respecitvely as ‘Noona’ and ‘Dongsaeng’. We also see that Dan Yi has hesitations to her marriage, she even initially runs away before Eun Ho gets her to go back. But we know that Eun Ho knows that her relationship with her husband has been going kind of on-and-off. Initally, Eun Ho is the kind of younger brother friend who threatens to ‘beat up’ his noona’s boyfriend because he doesn’t treat her right.
But then when we skip to the present and we see that their friendship, or at least, the trust connection between them, has diminshed a little bit. Dan Yi has kept from Eun Ho that she’s already been divorced for a year. Eun Ho still believes they’re living happily together as a family and that her husband has a respectable job.
They grow stronger again after starting to live together and once Dan Yi starts working at the same company. They start spending more time together again and realize how much they depend on each other’s presence. Their friendship was so nice to watch, it was so natural. It wasn’t even an issue that she was older than him, none of that mattered.
And then, when the time was right – actually, when Dan Yi started wavering about her potential relationship with Seo Joon – Eun Ho grabbed his chance to drop hints about his real feelings for her, something Dan Yi was never aware of. But once she found out, it didn’t take her a long time to get used to the idea. As she very nicely explained to Seo Joon at one point, Eun Ho was like ‘a very old book that she’d always carried with her, that she’d read hundreds of times, but lately it suddenly started to feel different and she started to pay more attention to different parts of it, starting underlining passages and it’d started to make her feel different’. I really liked this analogy. It perfectly summed up their relationship. They had been together for so long, thought they knew everything about each other, but then suddenly something changed. She changed her mind about the book she was so familiar with. And then he suddenly became more than a friend to her.

Honestly, I was kind of rooting for Seo Joon in the beginning. From the first time he and Dan Yi met, something felt special, and I just really liked his character. Ui Ha Joon has such a nice smile, it made me smile along with him every single time. And it was a nice storybook encounter they had, like Cinderella, where he found both shoes she lost on the street and just happened to come across the person they belonged to, haha.
Dan Yi chose not to follow this story because she was rational enough, she’d been through enough in life to still believe in fairytales. But they kept meeting by chance and they just had this really nice click in my opinion.
And at that point I still really liked the friendly relationship between her and Eun Ho, so I actually found myself not really minding whom she might end up with. But once they obviously started pushing Seo Joon and Hae Rin together, I already felt like Ahh, this is how it’s gonna go. That tiny bit of predictability is probably the only critical note I have about this series. And it still ended up not bothering me, because that last scene between Seo Joon and Hae Rin was ADORABLE. Anyways, I liked the connection between Dan Yi and Seo Joon and how it just naturally got a bit more awkward, but she made it clear to him the minute she stopped having an interest. And he backed away immeditately as well, because he didn’t want to force anything. FIND YOURSELF A PERSON LIKE THAT.

Quick in-between note, because it’s the tiny details that made this drama so great: the fact that Eun Ho’s girlfriend mentioned in the beginning dumped him for another woman!! I was so happy they normalized that!! They didn’t make a fuss about it or anything. I loved when Dan Yi looked at him like ‘Do you mean–??’ and Eun Ho just kind of shrugged like ‘hey, it’s not like I can help it’. Loved that little detail.
And also, how openly Dan Yi talked about things. She was so down-to-earth and natural. I literally laughed out loud when she got flustered by Eun Ho one time and she just went on mumbling to herself ‘…This is bad, I need to get laid. I’m even getting flustered by Eun Ho now… Ugh, it’s been too long since I had sex’. I mean, in what drama do people talk this openly about things like that to themselves? I haven’t seen a lot of Asian dramas in which this is just casually added in the monologue. I really appreciated it.

Back to the human relationships: as I said, I really like how smooth the connection took shape between Dan Yi and Seo Joon. Their thing in the beginning, where they just accepted each other as neighborhood friends and were even fine not knowing each other’s names, was so refreshing and nice. Even though fairytales aren’t real, and even though they didn’t end up together despite their special way of meeting, it was still nice. It was kind of sad that at the end of the series, they just completely grew apart and didn’t really interact anymore after their trial dating period was cut off. In the beginning Dan Yi was really excited about meeting him, but when Eun Ho officially took his rightful place by her side, she just legitly lost interest in him. This series really portrayed human emotions well, and also how fickle they are and how people can naturally change their minds about things.

Moving on, I really liked the build-up in Seo Joon and Hae Rin’s relationship. Even though it became very obvious that they were being pushed together at some point, it still didn’t happen in one go. There was still a period where Seo Joon really wasn’t comfortable with her and avoided her as much as possible.
Hae Rin’s character development was really nice as well. Because she was kind of introduced as the younger version of Ms. Go, the ‘other ice queen’. But she became so cute after that? When we saw her go through her crush and eventually heartbreak on Eun Ho, and how she became so fiercely active in pursuing Seo Joon to work with Gyeoroo. She started showing a lot of individuality as well and she became super interesting.
Also, can I mention her parents, please, because her parents ROCKED. I loved her parents, haha. I loved that when they found out Eun Ho rejected their daughter they were all like REVENGE MODE, but then they realized how much they actually liked Eun Ho and they just couldn’t bring themselves to hate him. But how they were deadglaring him throughout that book presentation… and then they took their revenge by just making him trip once and they were like ‘this is all we can do, we can’t actually harm him, he’s too nice’. I loved them.
But as I was saying (I told you, there was so much good stuff in this drama, I keep getting side-tracked), I loved how, even when Seo Joon avoided her, Hae Rin kept being her likeable self, she kept supporting him and standing by him from a distance. And that dialogue between them at the end, when they had a meal together and Seo Joon was just grinning from ear to ear trying to make her confess she cared about him. They were super adorbs.

By the way, it was nice to see Lee Jong Suk and Jung Yoo Jin act alongside each other again since W. Although their parts where kind of similar (In W, Yoo Jin’s character was also kind of the second female lead who had a crush on Jong Suk’s character), their friendly chemistry was really nice. I wonder if they’re close in real life, it must’ve been a nice reunion for them too. Otherwise they’re just really good at acting like they get along, haha.

My last comment regarding the human relationships: the relationships that the colleagues had with each other. Every Team had a Team Leader figure, and the employees all kind of fell under that person’s wing. It was always nice to see for example Mr. Bong stand up for Ji Yul because he was responsible for hiring her and he really wanted to give her a chance. While on the other hand, Hae Rin was super strict on Ji Yul. She went all Sparta on her in the beginning, especially when Ji Yul made that big mistake. But after Ji Yul started working more seriously, Hae Rin did see how much effort she started putting in and did come to appreciate her more, so it was nice to see her smile at Ji Yul at the end.

There were three more side side characters at Gyeoroo, one of them was Chae Song Yi (played by Lee Ha Eun). Her role kind of reminded me of the receptionist/junior assistent girl from Touch Your Heart, she was also young and outgoing and loved gossip, but she still was really sincere about her job.
The other two guys were both on the Marketing Team I think, and they had more supportive roles.

One thing I still have to mention, an important part and the only ‘secret to be revealed’ in the series was about this one famous author, Kang Byung Joon. They kept using this as a mystery case – whenever someone would mention Kang Byung Joon at Gyeoroo, everyone would just go quiet or avoid the subject.
The story about Kang Byung Joon was that he just suddenly disappeared. He supposedly wrote his last novel as a way of ending his career, then transferred all his copyrights and whatever to Gyeoroo and disappeared. So there were a lot of rumors, also dark ones, such as that the people from Gyeoroo had him locked up somewhere or even that he suddenly died.
It seems that only CEO Kim and Eun Ho know something about what actually happened to him and they don’t talk about it, only in private and even then they have their own kind of secret code. This is the only secret that Eun Ho is keeping from Dan Yi, as well.
It turns out in the end that Kang Byung Joon was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. His last work was Eun Ho’s first assignment as an editor, so Eun Ho took a personal interest in taking care of Writer Kang. When he started showing signs of Alzheimer’s, Eun Ho kept visiting him, taking walks with him. At some point, Kang Byung Joon started thinking of him as his son, as he had the vague memory of having a son but as his condition worsened and he started forgetting more, he just assumed Eun Ho was his son because he kept visiting him. Eun Ho then agreed to pretending to be a son to me.
However, in the end, it turns out that Seo Joon is actually Writer Kang’s son. There was a book that the writer had written with the title ‘April 23rd’, and the title was a mystery since it’s not even mentioned once in the book itself. We find out April 23rd is Seo Joon’s birthday and the writer wrote it down to keep remembering him. So in the end, he changed the title to his last book as secret message to Seo Joon that he hadn’t forgotten him.
On his side, Seo Joon knew about this, he knew he was Writer Kang’s son, but his mother had given birth to him after they’d already broken up. But he also kind of hoped to himself that the book title was his father’s way of telling him he remembered him. However, he was still frustrated because even if that were the case, his father never tried to find him. He only finds out at the end that it wasn’t that his father never wanted to find him – he couldn’t remember anything anymore because of his Alzheimer’s.
He gets to see his father on the latter’s deathbed.
The reason he finds out is because he anonymously (or under a pseudonym) sends the manuscript for Kang Byung Joon’s last unfinished book to Gyeoroo for publishing. Of course, since Eun Ho knows that the writer couldn’t have written that himself, they realize the April 23 connection and find out soon enough that Seo Joon is the son.

This storyline was build up very gradually and was only wrapped up in the last episode of the series. It’s clever how they planted the name and the mystery case of Kang Byung Joon quite early on and kept making references to it, so in-between everything else that was happening, hearing that name would always make me go, ‘Ah right, that hasn’t been solved yet either’. It was sad that Seo Joon didn’t get to meet his father earlier, but I think they gave his character good closure with it. He had been obsessed with Writer Kang’s disappearence for ten years or so, so he could finally understand what had happened to his father and make peace with Eun Ho as well.

Eun Ho and Seo Joon don’t get off on the right foot in the beginning. They meet even before Seo Joon is introduced to Eun Ho as Dan Yi’s new friend, they meet as chief editor and book designer and because of his suspicions about what happened to Writer Kang, Seo Joon isn’t very amiable towards working together with Gyeoroo (he also believes some of the rumors).
When Eun Ho then meets him as Dan Yi’s new friend and potential dating partner, he is extra turned off because – of course – he doesn’t want Dan Yi dating anyone, let alone him. So there is some tension between the two guys. But I’m glad they keep it professional throughout the series, despite some annoyances maybe, and in the end they make up like brothers, because in a way there were both Kang Byung Joon’s sons.

Let me talk a bit about some scenes that made a big impression on me.
First of all, the scene where Yoo Seon (Ms. Go), Young Ah (Ms. Seo) and Dan Yi go out clubbing together and end up at Yoo Seon’s messy house, all drunk and emotional and they start talking about their experiences with their marriages and how they ended and they cry their eyes out. This scene was such a wonderful, wonderful mess. I enjoyed every moment of it. It was SO good. Not only to give Ms. Go and Ms. Seo more background, but also just to solidy the foundation in the relationship between them all as colleagues and friends. Sometimes you need nights like that to bond.
At the same moment, while the women are drunk, CEO Kim and Eun Ho go to give Mr. Bong some support, who is out in the cold (literally) by himself, getting emotional about his divorce as well. The parallel that was drawn between the women and the men was really well thought of.
So in this scene we come to learn more about how Mr. Bong and Ms. Seo’s marriage was, and what event eventually made Ms. Seo want to get a divorce. It shows how important it is to communicate. Everyone needs someone to be on their side. Young Ah lost that feeling with Ji Hong.
And then, all that has to happen is a shop employee snapping at her and her husband not standing up to her. Worse, taking the shop employee’s side.
It may have seemed like an exaggerated reaction from Young Ah to base her divorce on that, but as she mentioned later to him, ‘Do you really think I divorced you because of that one time in the mall?’. It was just the final drop to make the bucket spill over. And it’s really mature of them that they still get together to meet their child, it’s not like only one of them gets to see him at the time. They make time to have a meal with their son together, they still need to face each other daily and they don’t try to avoid that, even though it will take some time for the wounds to heal.
And then Mr. Bong finds out the new guy Young Ah is dating is one of the writers that he’s working with and he gets all emotional again, saying ‘women are scary’. You can think about that whatever you want. Young Ah is a strong independent woman, she gets a divorce and she moves on. Ji Hong seems a little more unstable in that aspect, at some points it still seems like he expects them to get back together.
During the scene where their son is in hospital and Young Ah doesn’t even notify him and he gets there later and they really need to be there together as his parents… It was such a vulnerable scene, but it really showed that their child was a strong enough reason for them to still get along, not just because they had to see each other at the office everyday. It just showed a really real and interesting relationship between them.
This drunk scene is the first time Dan Yi openly confesses her own story to people she doesn’t really know yet. How her husband left her, how hard it’s been on her after devoting her life for her child. And then we also learn Ms. Go’s story, we see Yoo Seon getting emotional, telling them about how she ran away from her wedding.
What I also found interesting was when we meet the guy Yoo Seon was supposed to marry, as he delivers food to their office one night. Coincidentally, only Young Ah and Dan Yi are there at the moment (they ordered the food) and they recognize him from the picture Yoo Seon showed them that night. So in a way, it may have been kind of comforting for Yoo Seon, because she didn’t have to explain anything to them, they immediately got the picture, they immediately understood how awkward this must be for her and that they should show her support if she needed it. What was remarkable, though, was that Yoo Seon lied to her former fiancé about being married and having kids. She broke off the engagement and worked herself all the way up to a respectable position at a respectable company, she became a director, she went all-in for her career… but she was still embarrassed to let him know she didn’t get married yet.
I’m not sure if I can explain it right, but there was so much raw emotion and so much human depth in this scene where they cried their eyes out together, three single women in their late 30ies (edit: according to DramaWiki, Yoo Seon is 40 – I wouldn’t have guessed). It was so nice to get such an emotional insight in these women’s lives, it just reminds you that everyone is struggling in their own way and you can never know what they hide. The next day, while Young Ah is all friendly with Dan Yi, Yoo Seon just reverts back to how she always is at work, and only shows a kind side in the way you wink at someone without anyone noticing.
I also really liked Yoo Seon’s dynamic with the CEO, it was like he was the only person in the company that she really looked up to and who could make her smile. Honestly, the thing with the buttons was hilarious. She kept dropping buttons from her shirt in his office and he would just immediately spot them and get completely distracted. The scene where he had to sew her button back to her shirt while she was just sitting there was hilarious.
And I’m really glad they ended up together, that was the cutest thing. I loved it when he told her she was the balance between all the executives and she had that tiny smile when he left. ❤
Oh, and one last part: the little arc Mr. Bong had with the poetry. Gyeoroo principally didn’t publish poetry because it usually didn’t sell very well, but Mr. Bong was a big poetry lover and he fought so hard for it. There was this one scene where he and CEO Kim had a falling out and they were screaming at each other, and it was just pindrop silent in the office and it gave me so many goosebumps. The hierarchy was quite strange, because Mr. Bong was actually older than the CEO but he still had to listen to him. The CEO even called Mr. Bong ‘hyung’, I believe. And then Mr. Bong went to visit this poet he had been fighting so hard for, only to find him dead in his department, just when the CEO reflected on his behavior and called him to tell him they would publish the poetry. That was such an emotional period for Mr. Bong, also just after his divorce, and I got so much sympathy for his character through that bit. He was just so alone in his views at that moment. In the end, they do agree to publish this poetry collection because everyone (except the CEO) really likes it and this made my day because Mr. Bong was so happy and the CEO just felt really betrayed, lol. He thought everyone would vote against it and now he was the only one.

On to the romance part! When Eun Ho and Dan Yi start dating, they are the loveliest. The simplest type of happiness, reading books and taking naps together, with the cutest kisses (and cheek-bites?!) in-between to spice it up a little. I loved how, despite all these cute gestures, the relationship between them was still so natural. Dan Yi was never embarrassed of showing anything of herself, there was no hesitation. It showed how mature she was and it was so nice to have a main character like that, someone who doesn’t flinch or starts blushing when a guy holds her hand for the first time, but someone who is just comfortable with hugs and skinship and understands people and has the kind of natural intellect to find her place.
The worst thing that happens in the entire series is when the board finds out Dan Yi lied about her job application. One of the mean ladies at a company Dan Yi applied for in the beginning of the series turns out to be a friend of Yoo Seon and she tells her about Dan Yi’s resume (which was none of her business? She was quite spiteful). And then, according to the company rules, they had to terminate her contract.
And then suddenly the whole mood in the office changes, everyone becomes awkward towards her. Young Ah was just about to ask if she could upgrade Dan Yi to the Marketing Team because of her skills and consistently excellent ideas, especially for someone who was just in the Task Support Team. But we see how much Dan Yi loves the company and the people and it’s heart-breaking to see her become aware of everyone giving her the cold shoulder. Even Young Ah, who was supposed to be her friend, even Park Hoon and Ji Yul, everyone just becomes awkward around her and she’s smart enough to get the message and quit out of her own volition.
Yoo Seon helps her get into a small publishing company, but they are so unprofessional and even illegal there (fraud, plagiarism, tax evations and debts they never paid off).
It was interesting to see the do’s and don’ts of publishing companies. I started off as a complete noob, but I learned so much that when she started at that other company, even I could understand that that company was really bad.
Dan Yi is eventually re-hired by Gyeoroo because she wins an Idea Contest she participated in when she still worked there. The founding members are then able to turn to a special recruitment rule to re-hire here and all is well.

Right, the last thing I want to mention: THE TRENCHCOATS. Oh my lord, did I almost fall off my chair laughing. Apparently, when the board has to decide on a very important proposal or book or thing, they all come to work wearing a beige trenchcoat which they dramatically flip into the air as they walk. They all come in wearing sunglasses and these trenchcoats like the bosses they all are. And whenever they’re near, there would be this gust of wind to announce their arrival, it was hilarious. And then CEO Kim did it as well when he came to see Dan Yi to re-hire her. There was this gust of wind and I was like YESS THE TRENCHCOATS ARE BACK, haha.
Loved how Dan Yi even tried to do the same on her first day back, but she stopped herself because she thought it might come off too soon.

I went through so many different emotions while watching this drama.
One moment I would be crying with laughter, the next time I would be crying along with the characters, one moment I would be on the edge of my seat with goosebumps, the next moment I would be laughing about random in-between scenes again. There was so much variety, so much diversity, so much humanity. It never felt like it was too much and I believe every single moment, every single scene, every single dialogue was important. Nothing felt unnecessary. I love series that depict humans, people, emotions as raw and real as possible. In this drama, we are introduced to the reality of a struggling single mother trying to find a job. No matter how much life experience you’ve built up, when it comes to what you can put on your application form, the world is a harsh place. You really need to be lucky to get into a place that will give you a chance, even if you don’t have experience.

On a more personal note, I was also able to relate to several parts of the story. I’ve also been searching for work where I can express myself best, and even though I am currently in a quite stable position with a full-time job, it’s still not my passion and I’m still thinking about how I can incorporate what I love doing most into my life. Before I got this job (which I luckily got because of some skills I’ve worked on), I have also been in a position where my lack of experience really worked against me. The vicious cycle: how can you build up experience when all companies want is people who already have experience? Where do you start?
Actually, last week I got some pretty confrontational feedback that really made me think about this, I was already on the verge of just giving up since the feedback I got was about some points that I’ve been struggling with all my life and that I can’t change that easily because they’re part of my personality. And at that time, I watched the episode where Ji Yul made the mistake and where she became extremely aware of the fact that she actually wasn’t passionate enough about the job. There was this scene where she was looking around the office, seeing all the people work so enthusiastically together on books, and this gave her the motivation to try harder. She could’ve also just decided to drop it, right there and then. But she pushed herself to read up on stuff and force herself into taking an interest and this worked for her. And it also kind of inspired me to keep going, even though I still haven’t found the passion for the work I currently do – I need the job, and maybe along the way I’ll become more interested in it as well.

I would recommend this drama 100%. I loved the dynamic and the pace of the series. Interestingly enough, even though so much happened and you get to know so many different characters, the pace was always nice, nothing was rushed, everything was balanced. The transitions between the scenes and flashbacks, between the different emotions of every scene, nothing felt unnatural. It was a real pleasure and joy to watch it, all the way.
The relationships between all the characters were very well-written and the character development was really nice. The story was good and solid and insteresting, and I loved how they incorporated the book theme within the stories and the dialogues, including quotes and references to existing books that I can imagine will have been promoted a lot because of this drama.

It’s been a while since I just sat back and enjoyed every single moment of an episode. A drama that made me want to watch it again as soon as I finished it. Or made me wish I took even more time to enjoy it. It has really brought back my love for contemporary drama, where romance isn’t the only thing that makes the story anymore but you also actually learn something.
Very, very good.

After watching this on Netflix (which is new to me, K-Dramas on Netflix), I became really interested in watching more on this platform. I have three more dramas planned on my list for after this, and once I finish those I think I will start on the more recent ones that I’ve been so curious for and not specifically follow my list anymore (think Itaewon Class, It’s Okay To Not Be Okay etc.). I just can’t wait to watch all the good content.
Series like these are what makes my love for K-Dramas so real. I hope this was an enjoyable review to read and I hope that I was able to convey my genuine love for this series. Please let me know in the comments if you have any additional thoughts! 😀

See you next time!