And when Miyoung's latest school is also Jihoon's, he can't help but try to get close to her, and to be the friend she's never had. But after being abandoned by his parents with his grandmother, Jihoon keeps everyone at a distance and finds it hard to care too much about doing well at anything.īut when Jihoon and Miyoung's paths cross, everything changes: for Jihoon sees Miyoung's true form as she saves him from a Dokkaebi (goblin), and in the process of saving him, Miyoung's Yeowu Guseul - a fox bead that can control her soul. It is so hard to do, especially when discovery of her secret has led Miyoung to flee to new areas and schools throughout her childhood, with no friends or companions other than her strict and overbearing mother.Īhn Jihoon is seemingly an ordinary teenage boy - easily liked by others, with a pair of really good friends, and a charm that can let him get away with quite a lot more than he should.

But despite her mother's wishes, Miyoung has never wanted to take others' lives, and has tried to limit the damage her hunger can cause. Gu Miyoung is no ordinary teenage girl - she's a gumiho, a nine tailed fox, who must feed at least once a month on the gi of men in order to survive. Cho weaves these tropes around a pair of excellent main characters - a high school boy and a teenage girl who's actually half-gumiho (the Korean myth version of a nine tailed fox) - and their development and romance through it all makes the book really enthralling from beginning to end. Of course, tropes aren't a bad thing and Wicked Fox weaves these tropes in so well that I rarely groaned whenever a new one would come up to cause a swerve in the plot. * Despite several authors I enjoy tweeting about them, I've never actually watched a K-Drama (Korean Drama ), so that's the extent of my writing about them in this review.

Unsurprisingly - given its inspirations - its a book that follows quite a few classic tropes, which I (and I presume other readers) will recognize quite well as they come up along the way. Take one part romance soap opera, another part young adult story about growing up with rough parents and a lot of internal blame and guilt, and another part Korean-Myth inspired fantasy, and you have this novel. Wicked Fox is a K-Drama* inspired young adult fantasy by author Kat Cho. Short Review: A K-Drama inspired YA Fantasy novel featuring a gumiho (fox woman) and a teenage boy's lives intersperse in both the supernatural and high school as they struggle against their pasts, their natures, and each other.

Wicked Fox by Kat Cho