RETRO REVIEW: Gilded

(Copy provided by NetGalley.)

From Goodreads:

"Sixteen-year-old Jae Hwa Lee is a Korean-American girl with a black belt, a deadly proclivity with steel-tipped arrows, and a chip on her shoulder the size of Korea itself. When her widowed dad uproots her to Seoul from her home in L.A., Jae thinks her biggest challenges will be fitting in to a new school and dealing with her dismissive Korean grandfather. Then she discovers that a Korean demi-god, Haemosu, has been stealing the soul of the oldest daughter of each generation in her family for centuries. And she's next.

But that’s not Jae’s only problem.

There's also Marc. Irresistible and charming, Marc threatens to break the barriers around Jae's heart. As the two grow closer, Jae must decide if she can trust him. But Marc has a secret of his own—one that could help Jae overturn the curse on her family for good. It turns out that Jae's been wrong about a lot of things: her grandfather is her greatest ally, even the tough girl can fall in love, and Korea might just be the home she's always been looking for."

~~~~~

I know I've read this story before--I can picture it sitting in the pile of library books next to my bed, my eye drawn to the fascinating cover. I remembered most of the plot. But my Goodreads shelf has NOTHING. What the heck? I would have at least marked some stars or something if I was feeling too lazy or overwhelmed to write a review, but nope. No record. Nevertheless, this is still going down as a retro review, since it was my second read of the book.

Gilded doesn't exactly turn stereotypes on their head, but I was happy to have something a little different this time, where the girl was the fighter and the guy was the brains. And it was set in Korea and loaded with Korean mythology, which was a new experience for me. The plot hung together well, everything met its mark, and yet....

Jae Hwa is a California girl forced to move to Korea while in high school. She's half-white (I think?!) and while her mom did her best to bring Korean culture into Jae Hwa's life, Jae Hwa herself sounds mostly like a Californian...and a spoiled California girl, at that. Sure, she's mastered Tae Kwon Do and the Korean horn bow, which shoots further than any other bow in the world (that dead horse got good and beat), but her whining and her angst weren't balanced by anything redeemable. She wasn't funny, she wasn't a loyal friend, and she definitely didn't take the initiative to improve her situation until the very end, and by then it was too late for me to like her. Also, there were a couple of points in the book where it felt like the action jumped or Jae Hwa changed her mind and somehow the author forgot to tell the reader. Like Jae Hwa's sudden allegiance to and love for her Komo--that came out of the blue. I was pretty sure Jae Hwa didn't like her and felt that the feelings were mutual.

Overall, the book was enjoyable, but I wouldn't give it more than three stars, at best. On the other hand, I'll happily read the other books in the series to see how Christina Farley grows as a writer.

Gentle Reader Alert: I found nothing of concern.