Review of Wicked Fox by Kat Cho

*Wicked Fox* by Kat Cho (2019). Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers.

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.

This blog post is interesting to me because lately, I’ve been struggling to get in my reading time. I was working for the longest time as a freelancer and contractor, but recently pivoted to an 8-5 job where I’m in an office. It’s not hybrid, so I’m always at home trying to put the puzzle pieces together of how I’ll get my reading done. I also continue working on this blog when I’m not at work, so the Instagram reels I’m fed about a 5-9 feel too real right now.

Anyways, I am trying to find that time to read here and there. Somehow I’m still on track for my Goodreads goal, even though I’ve been slowly giving up on the notion of reading goals in life. I think they can be a little too much pressure and takes the fun off of reading at the end of the day, and I want to read because I want to stay in touch with literature while also pursuing my side career as a writer.

I’ve been trying these days to get through a chunk of my library TBR list as I won’t have access to it for a while. I’m moving to Korea for ten months for a Fulbright award, where I’ll be doing documentary and poetry work, so I’ll be in Seoul. I can use my library in the sense where I can check out books virtually for my Kindle, but I feel like I won’t be able to do much more than that.

So I picked up Wicked Fox because it’s been on my list for years. I read it while dogsitting for a weekend, and I did actually end up finishing this one fairly quickly.

Let’s get into the review!

An eighteen-year-old gumiho finds herself on a crash course for life skills—and love—after meeting a boy her age in Seoul.

Our female lead in this novel is Gu Miyoung, the daughter of a prominent gumiho and a human father. Her father is someone her mother won’t talk about, as her mother has a deep hatred for humans and refuses to trust them in any way possible. Her mother teaches her the ways of being a gumiho, including devouring the souls of men on the streets of Seoul, where they’ve just moved.

Miyoung targets men who she thinks did bad things, but when she lures out a man one night into the forest, she stumbles onto a particular sight: a dokkaebi, or goblin, has a human boy her age pinned in the same forest. She rescues the boy, but that puts them on a crash course throughout the rest of the novel—she’s lost her bead in the process, which is the essence of a gumiho.

That boy is Jihoon. He’s basically been abandoned by his mother, who has a new husband and children, and he’s been raised by his halmeoni (grandmother) at her restaurant. When Miyoung saves him that night, he discovers that she’s a mythical creature, as he realizes she has nine tails behind her as valiantly stops the goblin from devouring him.

That night is going to change the rest of their lives. As the police investigate the random murders that have been happening around Seoul for the past few months, Miyoung transfers into Jihoon’s school and is bullied—something that she knows in every school she’s been in so far.

While Miyoung realizes that not everyone can be trusted in her life, her own mother included, Jihoon finds himself falling hard for the girl that’s not like everyone else (literally). But when he’s put into the crossfire of what’s about to unfold, it’s going to create even more complications for everyone involved.

Overall Thoughts

This novel unfolds like a Korean drama throughout, with some of the most familiar tropes coming from them inserted into the narrative at time. I found the pacing to be good, and the longer length of this book didn’t really get to me until we started hurtling towards some of those final scenes.

The writing itself is okay to me, though. I wasn’t too impressed with the prose and I think it relies on that element of familiarity (the dramas) in order to keep it going, especially when the two characters find themselves parted some time. I also found Jihoon in general to be a flat character, which isn’t too helpful when half of the narrative is from his perspective.

This book wasn’t for me is what I’m saying. I need to have a book with solid prose in order to keep it afloat, and I thought the writing was just flat throughout. The storytelling was good, but the writing itself was at a level that I’m not used to and care for.

While it wasn’t for me, I think other people would enjoy this novel a lot. Give it a chance if it’s something you want to read—it might be one of your favorite books!

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