Idol Gossip by Alexandra Leigh Young

Title: Idol Gossip

Author Name: Alexandra Leigh Young

Age Rating: 13+

Star Rating: ✦✦✦✧✧

Genre: K-pop, Realistic Fiction

Summary: 

17 year old Alice Choy wants to be a famous singer like Lady Gaga, but she and her family moved to Korea for her mom’s new job. Hanging out with her younger sister and singing karaoke is their favorite pastime. When Alice gets scouted for a K-pop trainee program, she isn’t too excited.

Sure being an idol seems cool and all, but Alice always imagined being a solo act pop-star in America, not Korea. 

Yet with urging from her sister (an avid K-pop fan), Alice goes for the audition (and somehow makes it in!) But all is not well in the k-pop world: strict diets, heartless teachers, and mean girl trainees are all present. Will Alice be able to overcome the obstacles to become an idol? Or will she give up and go home?

Favorite Character: 

Alice!!! Alice Choy was determined, kind, and very headstrong. Clearly the author wanted to show that Alice was being selfish by not thinking of the other members of her group, yet I for one think Alice’s behavior is pretty justified. 

Not only does Alice feel alienated due to her lack of dancing skills or acting lessons, she feels inferior to the other trainees who are older, prettier, more talented, and overall have more experience. The cherry on top is that Alice is in no way fluent in Korean. 

Storyline Development: 

It was really unrealistic overall since of course nobody is going to randomly get scouted during karaoke but I understand that in rare cases these type of scouting does occur *somehow.* I’m glad the toxic side of the industry is shown, with haters actually being shown as well, haters. 

Stalkers are discussed, the fact that the boss of the company makes Alice act oddly on stage to cause an attention-grabbing scandal, these are all things that happen in real life. What is found unrealistic is that Alice and her sister Olivia never really fought with each other except for when Olivia was being bratty because her sister was busy. 

Meanwhile, Alice was too busy being busy to think of her sister. I have a sibling, and we fight all the time. We’re close, but not that close that we’d sing karaoke together. I feel like the media always portrays siblings as these close built-in best friends that you can always spend time with, yet that’s not the case. 

Usually, siblings take pride in annoying each other and fighting over who’s the favorite child, so this book didn’t really hit the spot for me. A plotline where Olivia felt jealous of her older sister, yeah, that could potentially be a better idea, but no. Authors just always have to go with the ‘these sisters are besties!’ plotline.

Worldbuilding: 

The author took it upon themselves to use made up k-pop groups for worldbuilding which is definitely a relief. Clearly the author researched since they had talked about Korean culture and how it differs from western culture. 

Overall I really liked the book and how it taught me about Korean culture and showed how a normal teen coped with such a stressful setting. Honestly, the trainees’ schedules were so jam packed, I almost cried imagining being in that situation myself (school is already stressful enough) am I right?

My Thoughts: 

I’m not really an avid k-pop fan, but I do enjoy listening to the occasional k-pop song here and there. I’m definitely a fan of Lisa from Blackpink, but other than that, I never had much interest in k-pop. 

But after reading articles about the “dark side” of the k-pop industry, I ended up reading the book K-pop Confidential, which then led me to read this book. 

Overall it was an enjoyable read, but it wasn’t too good either. I personally still prefer fantasy books, but realistic fiction does act as a breath of fresh air every once in a while.