This review is spoiler-free. Content warnings for the book are listed at the end.

Maurene Goo has a lot of potential as a YA contemporary author—she’s brilliant at writing authentic teen voices, and balancing fluff, humor, and drama. I Believe in a Thing Called Love was a super cute book that I sped through and enjoyed much more than I expected to. Beware the secondhand embarrassment, though, right from the start. Oof.

I really liked all of the relationship dynamics at play here. Desi and her dad have such a good, sweet bond, as he’s raised her since her mom died when she was seven. They cook together and watch K dramas and she occasionally helps him fix cars for his auto shop. Possibly one of the best parent-child relationships I’ve read. So wholesome.

Continuing on that point, I also liked Desi’s friends, Fiona and Wes. Unfortunately, they weren’t as present in the second half as the romance developed, but I did like them when they hung around. As for the romance? Desi and Luca, despite my early reservations about him, ended up being quite a cute couple.

One unique thing about this story is the focus on K dramas, as both a way for Desi and her father to hang out, and as inspiration for Desi’s love life schemes. I know nothing about them, but I did enjoy that element. It added something interesting, something to make this book stand out against other contemporaries.

My issue, though—the reason I’m not giving the book four stars—is with Desi’s problematic behavior. I cringed at plenty of scenes as I read, or urged her to calm down, but didn’t realize just how wrong it all was until I finished and thought about it. This girl causes not one or two but three dangerous incidents to occur, two of which could’ve killed her and/or Luca, just to get his attention. While she’s trying to get to know him, she stalks him online. It goes past being quirky and straight to weird and wrong.

Not only that, but the drama in the last fifty pages occurred and was resolved rather quickly. Given the severity of some people’s—*cough*Desi*cough*—everything shouldn’t have been smoothed over so easily, at least in my opinion.

I did enjoy I Believe in a Thing Called Love. I did find the romance cute, and a few other elements appealing. But I can’t look past how creepy and wrong some parts of it were. And, if I’m being fully honest, Luca’s bad relationship with his dad felt unnecessary. His mom was worse, in my eyes, and he favored her.

I don’t know if I recommend this or not, as I have quite mixed feelings. Despite that, I do plan to read more from Goo, and hopefully those books are just as cute without being problematic. Fingers crossed.

Representation:
• Korean-American protagonist
• Mexican-American sapphic side character
• Korean side character