3.5 stars

I don't speak or read Korean, I had to go through this book by inputting the sentences into, alternatively, Google Translate and Naver Translate (I just picked whichever translation seemed to make more sense or was clearer). That being said I imagine that if I did understand Korean I A) could have read this easily in one afternoon, even taking the time to listen to the songs after each chapter and B) might still have been a bit confused while reading it. There is a little disclaimer at the beginning of the book that basically states that the author is using their own style of syntax and spelling -- which I readily believe, given how much the translation sites kept trying to correct what I typed into them. I think the story is not as good as it could be because it came after the songs were all written instead of before or as they were being written; only some of Jonghyun's songs show up and others don't even though they obviously existed at the time. But I think, especially looking back through the lens of his death, that this book can obviously be read as saying a lot of how Jonghyun himself felt even though he put in the different characters (none of them are ever actually named, except for the dog). If you had read the book before, his song "Lonely" would not have been any surprise when it came out since that is a large part of what the characters are struggling with. It's not a literary masterpiece but it feels very much like a piece of Jonghyun's heart, told through a story, and that makes it beautiful.