Heart and Seoul

By: Jen Frederick

Narrated by: Greta Jung

One woman learns that the price of belonging is often steeper than expected in this heart-wrenching yet hopeful romantic novel and first in the Seoul duology by USA Today bestselling author Jen Frederick.

As a Korean adoptee, Hara Wilson doesn’t need anyone telling her she looks different from her white parents. She knows. Every time Hara looks in the mirror, she’s reminded that she doesn’t look like anyone else in her family—not her loving mother, Ellen; not her jerk of a father, Pat; and certainly not like Pat’s new wife and new “real” son.

At the age of twenty-five, she thought she had come to terms with it all, but when her father suddenly dies, an offhand comment at his funeral triggers an identity crisis that has her running off to Seoul in search of her roots.

What Hara finds there has all the makings of a classic K-drama: a tall, mysterious stranger who greets her at the airport, spontaneous adventures across the city, and a mess of familial ties, along with a red string of destiny that winds its way around her, heart and soul. Hara goes to Korea looking for answers, but what she gets instead is love—a forbidden love that will either welcome Hara home…or destroy her chance of finding one.

Critic reviews

"With this charming contemporary, Frederick (Bombshell) delivers a dramatic love story while sensitively exploring the thorny issue of interracial adoption...Fans and new readers alike will be hooked on this page-turning tale."—Publishers Weekly

Questionable

Her step brother is her love interest? Too much was repeatedly said. There's already an understanding of how she felt, but there was too many times that it was repeated. I was depressed by the time the end came. The way it ended was not a cliffhanger, it was more like an oh well, more tragedy to come. I did like that some of it was like a K-Drama, it just had too many twisted turns.

Could have used more editing

The wording is pretty repetitive and some impossible/unexplained things happen like someone losing their phone then using a translation app on the lost phone soon after. But if you are not bothered by things like this, or bothered by a lot of issues caused by rash emotion-based decisions, it’s not a bad story. There are a few nice plot twists.

The narration left something to be desired

The story was okay, though I didn’t realize it wasn’t a fully complete story so I wasn’t expecting to look for a part two. While I thought the Korean language and pronunciation was great, the narrator was very flat throughout, and I didn’t feel any emotion in her voice through the story. It was almost like having an AI voice read the text aloud.

Learned as I read

I enjoyed learning the customs and a few words of Korean sprinkled throughout the book. Narration was good, the Korean pronunciation authentic, and the storyline was enjoyable. The author kept the ending open for a follow up book. I prefer books that have closure one way or another…That is why I gave the book only four stars.

Great story, not the best narration

OK, so I loved this book! The search for her birth parents, the search for herself, all wrapped in a larger setting of her exploring Korea for the first time and finding love… Five out of five stars for the story itself. The narration, however… I had to put it on 1.3 times speed just to get past it. I almost stopped when I started because the narration was so Paul T and the voice says were so bad.