Blurbs and Justifications: Kwon Yeo Sun's Lemon

Blurb: Kwon Yeo-Sun’s Lemon

What happens when justice is never served? When grief festers and transforms into something unrecognisable?

It’s the summer of 2002, South Korea is hosting the World Cup, and Kim Hae-on is dead.

Two suspects. No conviction. No closure.

Seventeen years later, her younger sister, Da-on, is still haunted by the case that shattered her world. Twisting through fractured memories, class divides and the unspoken rules that govern women’s lives, will Da-on ever find out what happed to her sister?

‘A meditation on envy, grief and, this being South Korea, plastic surgery’

The Guardian

‘A Murder Mystery that Refuses to Be Solved’

Vulture

‘A haunting literary crime story’

Cosmopolitan

Justification: Lemon

My intended buyer is female “booktokker” aged 18-24, with a modest (but engaged) following of a thousand people who would rely on, or at least take into consideration, her recommendations. She primarily selects books on their “virability” but still enjoys them. In the past she would’ve been a big  A Court of Thorn and Roses series or the Shatter Me collection fan, however, after the recent rise in the mystery thriller BookTok  novel The Housemaid by Freida McFadden (all seen on The Works ‘Booktok Books’ collection), she seeks a new genre. Much like Colleen Hoover or Ali Hazelwood (see appendix D and E) whose popularity surged through social media platforms. Here, The Guardian states that BookTok has ‘clocked up 9.6bn views and counting’ and has lot of influence within the way books are sold [Flood].

I chose this reader as Lemon’s take on women within the patriarchy resonates more with young female adults. The novel’s themes – grief and unresolved trauma – aligns with the interest of an audience that is drawn to emotionally charged narratives.  You see this a lot with booktok. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo went incredibly viral because of this. In Lemon, the women are reduced to their just their beauty to the point that where a murder of a girl is the ‘High School Beauty Murder’ or the use plastic surgery to fit into beauty standards. It is the same for Evelyn who must hide her sexuality to succeed. In this article, it credits the active viewers of  ‘Booktok’ for The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo being on the ‘New York Times bestseller list for 37 weeks. With over a million copies sold by the end of March 2022’ [Canter]. With the emotional similiarities, Lemon may have the same fate.

When structuring this blurb my aim was to immediately immerse the reader in these themes. The opening of two rhetorical questions is in hopes of creating an emotional hook. That these lines mirror the novel’s tone, positioning it as more than just a mystery story. The abrupt, two-word, declarative sentences are to further reinforce the novel’s unsettling atmosphere but in an obvious almost forceful way, this is the same with ‘grief festers’. It's creating that uncomfortably that the novel holds.  Furthermore, this blurb comes under the 150-word limit (98 words) because when looking at other detective “viral” books, they all seem to speak for themselves in short punchy blurbs, especially with the mystery/ detective fiction. (See appendix F).

I added quotes of reviews because other viral Booktok books (see D, E, F) had them somewhere on the blurb. I chose these specific reviews as they follow the intention of these books. With The Love Hypothesis (appendix D), there is ‘grumpy met sunshine’ or ‘funny, sexy and smart’. The reviews are tailored towards the target reader, a young adult. I wanted to do this. The mention of ‘plastic surgery’ adds a layer of mystery that other viral novels may not have. With the Vulture review, ‘A Murder Mystery that Refuses to Be Solved’, is almost inviting the reader to do the impossible.

Blurbs and Justification bibliography:

For the blurb reviews:

Review 1: The Guardian  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/26/in-brief-lemon-the-nutmegs-curse-dirt-reviews

Review 2: Vulture https://www.vulture.com/article/lemon-kwon-yeo-sun-book-review.html

Review 3: Cosmopolitan https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/entertainment/g61912074/best-korean-books/  - this one is used on the cover on the cover of my own copy

Definition used for “Viral”: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/viral

Flood. A, The rise of BookTok: meet the teen influencers pushing books up the charts, June 2021: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jun/25/the-rise-of-booktok-meet-the-teen-influencers-pushing-books-up-the-charts - accessed 21/02/2025

Canter. Y, Why Are Authors Like Colleen Hoover and Taylor Jenkins Reid Seeing Their Book Sales Spike? Credit BookTok, Oprah Daily, May 2022, https://www.oprahdaily.com/entertainment/books/a39729958/booktok-and-the-reinvention-rediscovery-of-books/ - accessed on 21/02/2025

The link to a collection from store ‘The Works’ and their ‘Booktok Books’ collection. Accessed on the 26/02/2025. https://www.theworks.co.uk/c/books/booktok?tsz=40#9781408728512