Review of The Second Chance Convenience Store by Kim Ho-yeon

*The Second Chance Convenience Store* by Kim Ho-yeon, translated by Janet Hong (2025). Published by Harper Perennial.

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I recently fell into a spell of unemployment probably during the worst time to be unemployed, as it was very hard to find a job. I was applying to hundreds of jobs, getting interviews, but no offer was manifesting for me in the near future. So during this time, I had a lot of free time, and spent a good chunk of it chipping away at the blog.

I’ve always and forever been a library girl from the bottom of my heart. When I was a child my mother would always take us to the library and I’d pick out a ridiculous amount of books, and I’ve continued that tradition when I moved home from New York City, after college, in order to keep picking my brain for new stories out there in the world.

Although I’ve reviewed more American books and movies, simply because it is often more accessible for me to get these kinds of content as someone living in the United States, I often say the core of my blog reviews are my content on Asian literature and film. I think there are understandable holes in how we cover Asian literature/content on the Internet, and as someone who worked in a space where I was punished for doing so, I want this site to be somewhere I can help fill that hole a little bit.

That said, it always warms my heart when I get the chance to review a book in translation. I remember when it wasn’t as popular, so if you wanted a certain book in translation, you better start praying or asking a publisher or editor directly to acquire it (while they ignore all of your emails). I tend to get advance copies here and there, which makes me delighted to receive.

Today’s review is of The Second Chance Convenience Store by Kim Ho-yeon, which is within the East Asian (mainly Japanese and Korean) genre of self-healing. Disclaimer: I usually do not like these books, and I feel like every time that I pick these books up they don’t distinguish themselves.

This book, though, I had somewhat different feelings. Let’s get into the review before I spoil what I thought!

At one convenience store, a homeless man finds his life changed around, inspiring those he meet.

We begin this store not in the titular convenience store. Instead, the owner of the convenience store, Mrs. Yeom, is heading down to Busan from Seoul to go to a funeral. When she’s on the KTX train, she sits back and realizes that she doesn’t have her bag on her, but it helps when she gets a call from a man saying he has it.

Mrs. Yeom goes back for her bag and wallet, then is dismayed to see that the wallet was picked up by a homeless man. He buys himself a meal with her card in order to help him out somewhat, but when she sees him defend the bag and the wallet from some crooked men, her heart starts to soften.

He successfully keeps the bag away from the men, and Mrs. Yeom decides to give him a chance. She brings him to her convenience store she owns, and tells the worker that she needs to give him a fresh meal kit every day, not an expired one, if he comes looking.

So when Mrs. Yeom comes back from Busan, she learns the guy has indeed been coming for his meal, but insists on the expired ones anyway. She admires his honesty and ethic, and decides to give him the chance to change his life around and work at the convenience store, much to his chagrin.

He is given the name Dokgo a little bit before this. Dokgo manages to worm his way into the heart of the worker who trains him, who leaves not long after, and his presence at the store is going to change it for the better. The local neighborhood ahjummas and other folks are smitten with this man and his work ethic, and we see the stories of some of the people who are personally touched by him.

I will say though that the final arc of the book feels really rushed and out there at times, as it dives deeper into his past and what might happen if we uncover who this man actually is. I really didn’t expect the novel to go the way it ended up going in, and then I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.

However, this is really unique compared to some of the other healing fiction novels I’ve been reading. I found this to be more palatable for me as a reader, which is interesting because as soon as we deviate from the territory of the genre in the second half, it felt a little bit like a different novel than it was and not a healing fiction novel anymore.

Overall Thoughts

In the end, I was lukewarm about this novel. It had a really solid start, and I was beginning to get invested in the story when it took a turn about 60% into the story (or at least my Kindle said 60%, so around the halfway point is what I’ve been saying). That turn is what threw me off of it, as I mentioned before.

The characters in it though were heartwarming to see. Mrs. Yeom really gave this guy a chance and let him turn his life around, which is such an act of kindness. While everyone else was turning their nose up at Dokgo’s smell and the fact he was homeless, she gave him a chance.

It’s when her son, who is kind of depicted as a deadbeat, starts sniffing around and doesn’t like Dokgo there specifically that trouble begins brewing at the convenience store. Regardless, some of the themes people should definitely be taking away and applying to their own lives, as I’ve seen how people act towards the homeless.

It was interesting to learn about who Dokgo was before this, but I feel like it was set up and outlined in a way that wasn’t productive. It felt like an entirely differently book to me, which is why I think I was so off put by it.

I say go pick this one up if you’re interested in it! Go to your local library or indie bookstore in search of it. If not, it might not be high priority on your TBR list. Much love and gratitude from me to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance copy of the novel.

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