This cute and funny romance will hit the spot with middle graders who want to read YA or teens looking for gentle romance. 

I Believe in a Thing Called Love by Maurene Goo (2017; 325 pages).

Korean American Desi Lee is great at a lot of things. She’s president of her class and valedictorian. She’s determined to attend her dream school Stanford and go on to medical school. But when it comes to love, Desi finds herself flailing. Every time she tries to talk to a boy she has a crush on, she ends up humiliating herself. When brooding artist Luca Drakos appears at her school, Desi immediately falls for him and has a brilliant idea. All she needs to do is come up with a plan to follow. It’s worked with her academic goals, it’ll work with love, too. So she studies her dad’s favorite Korean drama shows and comes up with her “K Drama Steps to True Love”. But will her plan work to catch the boy of her dreams?

This is an adorable teen romance with tons of humor that makes for a light, fun read. The romance is very gentle – it never goes farther than kissing – so this is a great choice for tweens and teens who want a gentle love story. I really loved Desi’s moments of humor with her Korean immigrant dad and I appreciated the fact that author Maurene Goo includes a lot of Korean cultural details in a story that’s not issue-driven. Once I picked it up, I just couldn’t put it down!

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