5 – A keeper!
4 – Very good
3 – Passable
2 – I’d rather read a telephone book
1 – An absolute bomb.
Read at your own risk!
Luna King’s “Hotness Overload” trilogy is the story of
three pretty young women (Itchie, Suri and Meiko) whose bond with each other
goes beyond the close friendship they share with each other. They also share a fascination with gorgeous,
chinky-eyed hunks, and this is what soon leads each of them to their real
loves.
In the first book, Sarang Hae,
My Honey, Cosmetology student and Koreanovela addict Itchie has the hots
for her half-Korean, half-Pinoy schoolmate Min Ho. At first, Min Ho doesn’t pay much attention to her, until her
bubbly personality and a series of “accidents” draw him to her. Itchie is soon trapped in a dilemma. Min Ho has fallen in love with her, but
partly because of her “tiny” lie. She
has somehow led him to believe she has cancer.
Will she choose to tell the truth at the risk of losing the man she’s
head over heels in love with?
The second book of the trilogy, Wo,
Ai Ni, My Darling, is the story of Journalism student and part-time model
Suri, whose unplanned act of concern towards Greyson, a gorgeous Tsinoy, leads
to love. All seems well, but then Suri
is suddenly forced to choose between her love for Greyson and her loyalty to
her childhood friend, Windale, who isn’t just suffering from his unrequited
love for her, but is also sick and dying.
The last book, Aishiteru, My
Baby, is the story of Education major Meiko, whose fan-love for her idol,
the famous Japanese actor-model Skylus, eventually turns into real love. But is Meiko’s love doomed? Apparently, Skylus is a cold-blooded,
ambitious bastard who cares for nothing else except his career.
The Asian influence is impossible
to overlook in this trilogy. Everything
seems to have come straight out of a Koreanovela or an anime
series. Based on her descriptions of
her heroes, the boys look exactly like those K-Pop stars or those illustrated
gorgeous men in anime series that many Pinays have been drooling over.
If you’re into anything and
everything singkit and pogi, then you might want to check out
this series. But if you’re looking for
an enjoyable romantic read that has a little more than just cute guys and kilig
moments, then this might not be it for you.
Writing can be a very difficult
job, and I do appreciate the time and effort that writers put into making their
“babies” and sharing them with the public.
I also don’t want to be cruel, so let me just say that Luna’s series
just wasn’t an enjoyable, satisfying reading experience.
No doubt, Luna King has the
ability to come up with the most creative names for characters. I doubt if any of you out there have ever
met someone named Skylus, for example.
Unfortunately, my impression is that she spent more time thinking of
interesting names rather than crafting a story that truly stands out.
The heroines are all cute and good-looking, but there’s
nothing much I could glean from their characters that would make me empathize
with them or fall in love with them.
Other than being cute, the characters seem flat. The conflict in each of the stories don’t
feel like conflict at all, but a surprising development. It almost seems like Luna, while writing one
of her stories, just thought, Oh,wait! I need to introduce conflict in the
story. Let me introduce one here right
now before the story ends!
I was also bothered by the Luna’s strategy of repeating
certain scenes in the series to emphasize the connection the characters had
with each other. To me, it was just a
total waste of important head space. I
think the series would have been more enjoyable had Luna used her word count
allotment to create fresh scenes that not only featured the interaction between
the characters, but did something much more important like, say, advance the
storyline or flesh out the characters.
In my opinion, there was just too much space devoted to
the kilig moments that the other elements necessary in creating a good
story suffered. Each of the book in
this series appears to follow this process:
(1) Describe the hottie; (2) Create lots of kilig; (3) Insert
minor conflict to separate the hero and heroine; (4) Create a time lapse to show
maturity; (5) Reunite the hero and heroine.
While I do understand that a romance won’t really succeed
if the hottie is, well … nottie … I would appreciate reading a romance with a
little more heft, a little more substance.
I guess it’s the generation gap at work here. I’d assume that Luna is still a very young
writer, given these books. Its elements
are something that would appeal to the younger set, with her hunky heroes, who
all seem to have been taken out of a Koreanovela, a K-Pop band, or an anime
series. It’s all cuteness and fluff,
which, again, teenagers would love.
Admittedly, my own teenage years are long gone. I’m a grown-up now. However, being an adult doesn’t mean I have
forgotten all about young love, first love, and I don’t appreciate kilig moments. Personally, I don’t have anything against
hunky heroes, or cuteness and fluff. I
love light reading as well as heavy reading, but I need to find something
memorable about them. I still have the
ability to squeal and squirm like a little girl if I come across some major kilig
moments in a book or a movie. But
that’s if it’s wonderfully crafted.
The problem in this series is, it doesn’t offer much other
than pogi guys, cuteness and fluff.
They’re “safe” material, in the sense that there’s nothing here that
would really offend anyone, therefore, it’s commercial and marketable. But the problem with being too “safe” is,
there’s a tendency to become run-of-the-mill and generic, and this is, unfortunately,
my impression about this series. “Safe”
and “generic” are probably not the directions Luna might want to take if she
wants to stand out in the romance genre and be remembered in the long run.
Like I said, my guess is that Luna is still a young
writer, so I’m pretty sure she has ample time to improve at her craft and give
other people (like me), not just her fans, something that’s worthy of being
called “hotness overload”.
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