Sang Duri is the eldest member of a Korean pop boy band. While rising to stardom and fans obsessing over the band, it becomes difficult to manage the fallout after Duri’s solo single causes unintentional controversy.

To spare his bandmates from any potential fallout, Duri hides out in a “McMansion” of a woman he meets in an H-Mart.

This novel was challenging to read, and the characters were hard to love. With the pacing and style reminding me of an academic journal article, the story fell flat for me. With that said, I sadly could not finish what I thought would have been an intriguing story.

The publisher provided ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Wise and darkly witty. An interesting read.
Many thanks to Atria and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

I wasn't sure what to expect with this one. I am not a Kpop fan, but the premise was intriguing and I learned something new. There is a lot going on in this book. Because of the short length, I feel like some things were glossed over. I found myself rereading a lot. I can't tell if I was trying to catch all the nuance, or if the cadence of the language was making it hard to grasp. That said, I felt like the author captures the culture of academia and I suspect gets that of K-pop as well. The book is fairly short and the topic is a band, but it isn't lite reading (there's footnotes!) That said, if I was going to invest that much thought, I wanted a bit more depth. Because so much was going on, nobody really was a complete picture and events seemed more like snapshots. For me it was worth the read, but if the subjects aren't ones you are excited about, it might not be worth the effort.

Thank you to the author, the publisher, & to NetGalley for the Arc!

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Unfortunately this was a DNF for me. I couldn’t get into it.

The Band follows a Chinese-American psychologist who offers shelter to Duri, a recently cancelled K-pop idol. Where The Band shined was its exploration of obsession and toxicity in K-pop stan culture, showing the "dark" side of parasocial relationships. As I read, I thought about the extent that K-pop idols have to cater to their fans: Since their success is driven by their fans, do K-pop idols have a "duty" of some sort to make their fans happy and if so, to what extent?

Where The Band fell short was its sequence and character development. The chapter on the music producer’s earlier years felt out of place and the characters felt flat. I wanted a psychological study of the characters, but this ended up reading like a thriller instead, despite the psychology references.

I’ll be honest and say I really don’t know much about K-pop. This sounded like a way for me to learn more and the description seemed interesting. At only 224 pages, I’m sorry to say it took me at least 30% of the book to feel like I had any clue what was going on. That probably is just a reflection of my lack of understanding, so don’t judge the book based on me.
Once I reached that 30% mark though, I found the story started to grab my attention. Once the jaded psychologist entered the story, I actually started page flipping. Part serious and part humorous I’m glad I stepped out of my usual thriller box to give this a try. I will admit, I still don’t totally understand K-pop but I definitely know more than I did before I started.

Tried really hard to get into this one but unfortunately wasn't my cup of tea. I think this was mainly due to the writing style; it sort of dragged on and the main characters themselves lacked a bit of depth. I wish there was a bit more development or maybe I just had too high hopes going in.

This one sounded like it would be an interesting read but it ended up feeling more like a collection of short disjointed stories. It didn’t read like a cohesive novel at all. There are three or four storylines all tied together, but with multiple points of view and timelines that switch constantly. It was a mess really. I spent more of this book confused and trying to figure things out then it should take. What a frustrating book

I could not finish enough of this book to be able to leave a comprehensive review, but I hope it finds its audience and I am grateful to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read an advance copy.

this felt more like a collection of short stories about a group of people than a cohesive novel, I couldn’t tell what the central plot was, how these characters felt and what it meant to them as a group

1.5 stars. I knew going into this book that it was going to be a hit or miss, just based off of the fact that I only heard about it through a random NetGalley marketing email. But why not, I thought, it sounds interesting, and maybe it'll surprise me. Unfortunately, The Band majorly missed the mark for me. The book seems to be a combination of three or four different storylines, all ostensibly tied together but with POVs and timelines that switch constantly - and so often that none of the characters felt more than one-dimensional except for, perhaps, Sang Duri. The characters fell flat, the plot felt genuinely cartoonish (has the author actually engaged in the k-pop fandom since 2010?), and the entire book felt suffused with a kind of cynicism that put me off. The tone is confusingly equal parts irreverent and pretentious and it's almost impossible to separate the author's voice from that of the female main character (although I hesitate to use the word "main," because of how often the POVs switch). In fact, I couldn't really understand what the point of the FMC was at all, except perhaps to serve as the author's self-insert and mouthpiece. I could not understand what the point of this book was at all, to be quite honest - if it was supposed to be an academic study of the parasociality of k-pop or a satirical story about fandom and its sometimes not-so-harmless fun or just a thinly-veiled self-insert BTS fanfiction. In trying, in some way, to be all three, The Band fails to be a good version of any of them.

A K-Pop star disappears and hides out with a Chinese-American he meets in H-Mart.

This was a slow read for me and very hard to get into it. It reads like a non fiction, especially in the first half of the book. About 100 pages in, it is a bit easier to read. The format and pacing doesn’t change, but you get into the story and start to understand the plot that becomes entertaining. The cultural aspect was interesting to me and I learned a lot from the read.

“The more powerful a person is the easier it is for the team to simply Will their plans into existence, come what may.”

The Band comes out 4/16.

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I really wanted to like this book, but it wasn't for me.

I struggled with the style the book was written in. It's told through multiple perspectives and jumping between the manager of The Band in his life before The Band and a psychologist in the US. The book started slow and felt almost academic, like a journalists' nonfiction take and there's a lot of teasing of some terrible past action that takes a long time to reveal. I had trouble connecting with the characters because I felt like I didn't really get to now them, but did get to know things about them. To me the book felt like a very slow buildup to something that happens very suddenly and quickly at the end that left me feeling more confused than anything.

I can see why fans of mysteries or hardcore kpop fans might enjoy this book even if it wasn't for me.

Well written literary fiction,,a novel about fandom and entitlement.This is a unique novel thoughtful and humorous we’ll rounded characters.I was drawn right in and enjoyed.#netgalley #atria

DNF at 30%

The disjointed narrative didn’t work for me. I never connected to the characters and lost interest.

This is a very uniquely written story about a very interesting topic. Sadly, it'll work for some people, specifically Kpop fans, but I don't think it'll work for everyone. Not that you have to be a Kpop Stan to get the story, the footnotes are great and super helpful, but I think you get more out of the story if you are in the know already. Overall, a very interesting read.

I've had the unique privilege of encountering Christine Ma-Kellams' work both in the form of academic journal articles I've cited in my work as a trainee psychologist, and now in the form of her first full-length novel. Ma-Kellams brilliance is apparent both in her academic work and in her literacy prowess: her prose is sharp, darkly funny, and often evisteratingly honest in its exploration of toxic idol culture and its intersection with human psychology. The story interweaves several parallel stories, all of which revolve around a fictional K-Pop idol group known as The Band, seemingly a close parallel to real life groups such as BTS. Between the failed girl-group proceeding The Band, a cynical LA psychologist who finds herself the unwitting caretaker of a depressed Band member in hiding, and the tribulations of The Band itself, the novel explores heavy themes of racism, mental health, cancel culture, and the toxic and carceral nature of fame.

I've never been involved in K-pop idol culture but have always found the parasocial relationships common within it to be fascinating: the gloss of love and obsession painted over a practice that can be deeply dehumanizing, and, when practiced from a Western lens, unintentionally but often significantly racist. Ma-Kellams explores this dynamic with a dry humor that belies deeper frustration and exposes the raw underbelly of institutions and and practices that strive to appear bengin yet propagate unimaginable abuse. I also loved the tidbits that speak to Ma-Kellams psychologist background, inducing experimental studies cited in footnotes and a fascinating annotated bibliography.

The were only two aspects that didn't quite land with me. The first was the degree to which it was difficult to separate art from artist: although the novel is not advertised as autobiographical, psychologist in the book bears incredibly close similarities both in lifestyle and background to Ma-Kellams, and I often found myself getting pulled out of the story by trying to guess how much of the characters' thoughts and feelings paralleled Ma-Kellams own. There's nothing wrong with writing what you know, and in fact I think this likely gave the story particular strength and specificity, but it also felt intensely personal in way that I wasn't expecting. The second thing that surprised me was a major event that occurs near the end and feels both hugely unexpected and somewhat dissatisfying: I feel like the book could have gone without it and been equally, if not more, strong.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC. This novel surprised me-- the writing was very unique and it was funnier than I had planned for. I enjoyed this!

Thank you Netgalley for this arc! I’ll be honest, Kpop has been my thing for the past few years. It’s something I adored throughout the years as an escape and guilty pleasure even.

Kpop culture is unlike any I have ever experienced. But it is the fan culture overall that this book shines a light on. I do adore the swiftness of this book: which is to say bravo on the pacing. But I ultimately did want more.

I was asked to review this book, and being someone fascinated by fangirl culture I happily obliged. I was pleasantly surprised by how literary the book was- I was expecting something lighter/more thriller-like, but I really enjoyed the tone and voice that the author employed. Very witty first person perspective that had me hooked. It was poetic, while also implementing so many psychological deep dives (I’m a psych nerd so I loved that aspect of the book). I ended up reading the whole thing in one sitting. Had a lot of fun reading it, and I know it will do well when it is released.