The girl’s boyfriend visits multiple times throughout the novel, while the narrator doesn’t have a love interest-that is, until a French writer and artist shows up at the inn.

These two kind of serve as foils throughout the novel, as the narrator/protagonist is told that she should get plastic surgery in order to seek out better jobs in Seoul, but still she remains the same as ever in the town of Sokcho. She cooks at the guesthouse, where the only person really staying there is a young girl from Seoul who got her entire face done with plastic surgery. It seems like at the start of the novel everything is routine. It seems our narrator doesn’t really remember her father. She is mixed Korean and French, went to school to study both of those country’s national literatures, but doesn’t actually really speak any French because her father left them when she was young.

She is one of the few young people who hasn’t left this town yet because she feels an obligation to her mother, although we see that their relationship isn’t exactly the best throughout the novel. Our protagonist in Winter in Sokcho is a young woman who works at a local in under an ahjusshi named Park. Nothing ever happens in Sokcho, until it does. I didn’t love or hate this one thought it just kind of exists, like its narrator. I think it took me under an hour to finish the book, which is a sign it’s short. The type and front is also a little larger than the standard, so then it goes by very quickly, especially when there’s dialogue. It wasn’t hard to do that the book, when translated into English, is only about one hundred and fifty page.

One night I brought the book into the bath with me as a form of getting all the stress out and self-care, and then ended up reading this entire book in one sitting.

Of course, me being me, I procrastinated on reading this until 2023, when I got this book for Christmas from my older sister. I remember I didn’t pick it up at the time because I was in a big reading slump and was having a terrible time in college, then the COVID-19 pandemic happened like a month after the English release. For some reason, I can remember clearly when this book came out and started to make waves.

Alphabet Amigos by Angel M. Alvarez