A review by machadamia
Beyond the Story: 10-Year Record of BTS by Myeongseok Kang, BTS

informative slow-paced

3.0

As someone who has never looked into BTS’ success nor really watched much of them (though I have checked out their music) but was always curious about their meteoric rise, I picked up this book hoping to find out more about why it was the case or even to find out more about the industry from the eyes of these people. What I got instead was a relatively dry documentation of their career. I expected there to be a lot more personal insights and a bit more of behind the scenes but at times the quotes really felt very PC and repetitive. Like every performance was hard to prepare, every song written for the fans or hoping to inspire the fans etc. idk I feel like it’s a very scripted kpop group answer because I have heard this so much before. And then I really hate the way the author wrote the song names and titles and all and the song lyrics, sometimes it made me feel like they were just trying to pad the book a lot more. I feel like the first 30% of the book was good and interesting but kind of lost pace later on and became repetitive and dry. Because I did enjoy the first few parts, I rated it 3 rather than 2. But honestly parts of it especially towards the end was a real drag to read.