Whats wrong with Secretary Kim (Vol 1- 6)
This is really a 3.5 star for the whole series, and a solid 4 stars for the first book alone. This is a series of 6 books about Secretary Kim, who’s worked for 15 years for a narcissistic boss. The boss isn’t a bad person per se, but only cares about himself and what he wants. As his Secretary, she does much more than just keeps his calendar, but also basically acts as his fixer, making sure he gets his food, his gifts, his transportation all taken care of.
Well, after 15 years, she’s decided no more. She’s paid off her family’s debt with the pay he’s given her, and can now pursue her dreams. Which is finding a boy that she remembers being in a particular pickle with when she was very young. Its some trauma that is never explained until much later in the series, but you know it involves spiders. Oh, she’s also looking for someone to marry after basically 15 years of having no one due to the demands of her job.
What happens next is that the Boss basically refuses to allow her to quit, and offers to raise her salary, improve her working conditions, and…even marriage (as a convenience of course. he’s not interested in marrying her (or anyone else), he’s interested her in not losing her as his secretary!)
This leads to some highly unusual hi jinks and they show you his first moves to “woo” her in his own awkward ridiculous ways. That’s the first book and it was an absolute delight of a premise and execution.
Well, the rest of the series takes a different turn.
I don’t want to spoil it, but the book goes from crazy hi jinks in a high powered CEO and his fixer kind of way, to a family dynamics and abuse type of story. its nothing overly traumatic, but i don’t think what happens between the boss and his brother is even remotely realistic as an example.
the secretary’s family is much more relatable for obvious reasons, but when you find out what traumatized her in her youth and spiders, you also kinda go “mmmmm”. Everything wraps up in a neat bow like these type of stories tend to do, but in a weirdly unsatisfying way for me. I guess I was more invested in the hi jinks portion of the story and when that ran its course out (in just one book or so), i was disappointed. I was invested by that point and its a short series, so of course I finished it.
I don’t quite regret finishing it, but whereas I was more interested in checking out the anime/live adaptions of this series based on the first book alone, now I really have no interest in checking out the adaptations. Read into that what you will, but solid 3.5* i guess.