Reviews - Beyond the Story: 10-Year Record of BTS

1.28k reviews for:

Beyond the Story: 10-Year Record of BTS

Myeongseok Kang, BTS

4.47 AVERAGE

ellie705's review

5.0

adventurous emotional hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted reflective medium-paced

dianam1206's review against another edition

5.0

emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

eufonia's review

4.5

emotional funny informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

Let me preface this by saying that this rating and review is incredibly biased. I have been an ARMY—a BTS fan—for almost eight years, so I’m not exaggerating when I say that there were parts of BTS’s story that I knew by heart already.

This book has a really interesting structure, Myeongseok Kang weaves a wonderful storytelling that blends the words of the members with his own narrative. It definitely reads like a journalistic novel, one that breaks down the story of the band in a way that makes it easy for people who know nothing about them to understand, but that keeps it entertaining for super fans like me.

I highly recommend this book if you like non-fiction, in particular biographies. BTS’s story is unlike anything you’ve ever heard about a “boy band”; an underdog tale that gives some insight on the kpop industry and even the music industry as a whole. There’s a lot of blood, sweat and tears, but also a testament of what the love between seven friends can achieve. The members are very humble and sweet, and reading their own retelling of some of these events broke my heart but it also made me smile like a fool. After all these years, I still love them very dearly and I think reading this book might make other people love them too.

Kang’s prose is really good too, I was familiarized with his writing because he wrote (or still writes, I’m not sure) articles for Weverse Magazine, which is BTS’s parent company's own online outlet, and I always enjoyed when he interviewed them. There are some humorous decisions he makes to structure the timeline and that makes the reading really enjoyable.

Apart from the good writing, the book is filled with QR codes, photos, footers and song lyrics that contribute to make the experience very complete; it’s truly a deep dive that helps you get the whole picture.

I’m only taking off half a star from the rating because sometimes the timeline wasn’t completely linear and, to me, as a fan, that was alright, but to someone, who isn’t familiarized with how these things unfolded, it might be confusing. Also, the pacing is fast, but I did find it a little hard to finish, because when I caught up to the events that I was there for as a fan (the book covers 10 years of BTS’s story, from 2013 to 2023 and I became a fan in 2017), some of them were so fresh in my memory that I didn’t feel like it was necessary for someone to tell me how it went down. Very personal nitpickings that are not relevant if you go into this book blind, really.

Finally, to wrap this review up, I’d like to extend a huge thank you to Anton Hur, Slin Jung and Clare Richards, the translators that brought this story to a very accessible English. In general, my experience as an ARMY wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t for the wonderful people who translate. I’m still determined to learn Korean one day, but, for now, you have my whole gratitude.

APOBANGPO, BORAHAE.

cursedscribe77's review

4.0

4/5 stars

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Such an interesting book about the biggest group in the world.

abookishbalance's review

4.0

4/5 stars

Pros:
-this is an amazing place for any baby ARMY to start, it's so helpful having a time-line for BTS's big moments and the QR codes are handy
-ARMY will get sentimental over the text, and BTS's inspiring and amazing journey
-exclusive interview with the members that answered some things I was curious about
-provides very interesting insight into the kpop industry

Cons:
-this would not hold up were it not for the BTS members being interviewed, they add so much to the narrative
-the author is almost a bit too biased, and some of the conclusions he draws lean a bit cheesy
-I knew that if I didn't finish this quickly and put it down for a time it would lose some momentum (which unfortunately is exactly what happened)
-I'm not sure this has much appeal for anyone who isn't ARMY (or into kpop)