_nayla_ 's review for:

Y/N by Esther Yi

4.0

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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An unnamed girl suddenly becomes infatuated with K-Pop idol Moon and rapidly spirals into what many would consider psychosis. She wants to consume Moon in every sense of the word. She dreams of him, destroys relationships for him, writes disturbing body horror fan fiction about him — and he has no idea who she is. But she knows him, okay? She knows him like no one else does! 

 

Y/N exists on the outskirts of my personal life; that is, I’m familiar with circles where this all-consuming love for stars runs blood deep, encompassing fans’ lives wholly and occupying every waking thought. They dream of these people, have intense para-social relationships with them, buy all their merch. Every tour, every album, every movie, every quote. It’s disconcerting — and a bit pathetic, in my view — that an emotionally bottomless, ultra-capitalistic relationship with someone they’ll never know defines their existence. 

 

Do I have favorite bands? Favorite authors? Amazing actors I like to see in movies, funny comedians, stellar performers? Of course! What separates a casual fan from these Y/N enthusiasts is a social life pre-obsession. Harsh, but true. So many people, just like the main character in this book, are lost. They have no dependable sources of joy, they don’t feel seen by others. 

 

They’re content with melding into whatever, whoever, to get a person’s attention who will never know them. A secular god. They find comfort among this god’s other followers, learn chants, sing praises all day, every day. Hold them to an impossible purity standard, infantilize and aggrandize them in turn. 

 

I actually think Michaelson (Y/N’s ex) was right on the money: Y/N is sick in the head, she needs counseling. She needs to grieve this person she has flown across the world for. Although I do think she had to find him, speak to him, relate to him person to person, to really understand that putting anyone on a pedestal is a dangerous game to play. That’s how performers get murdered for their desecration of the fan’s deluded views. This is a fantasy, plain and simple — taken too far, and into the real world, it can cause irreparable harm. 

 

She meets Moon fans in Seoul who are a little crazier than her, which she recognizes, and makes a friend, who goes by the name of O, that leads her to the weird compound where the boyband’s members are resting after their retirement. O facilitates her meeting Moon and, in the end, captures Y/N’s essence in a succinct and genuine short film. Her obsession, her sacrifice, her pain. 

 

O’s film encapsulates the black hole Y/N’s been throwing herself into for months. Digging herself out of her own body and chucking it at the ether, disemboweling her personality to make room for a person who can never live up to her fantasies. A person like you or me. A good dancer, to be sure, but bodies don’t last forever. 

 

In the end, she’s just as lost as before. She’s been brought down to Earth from her trip to the Moon and must take her withdrawals on the chin or else risk falling into another fandom spiral. I feel for her and others like her that feel the need to seek connection in this way. 

 

I enjoyed how viscerally Y/N felt in the book, her passion was palpable. I liked the contrast between what she was feeling for her mythical Moon and how she approached her day to day. Her dispassionate musings about her present, empty days filled with Moon thoughts, her obsessive repetitions. It was concerning, but that’s the point. Likewise, every other character was just as weird and prone to self-sacrificing for others. 

 

The prose was cumbersome, self-important, and crude, but oh well! It read like well-executed Y/N fan fiction, which is very hard to do — not just because Y/N is among the absolutely worst written fan fiction you can possibly find on the internet, but because the whole point of Y/N is to have the blandest character possible take you on a journey to see your favorite star. Very meta, very appreciated. 

This is for a specific audience that recognizes the slow, sometimes painful development of a fan fiction author’s voice, mixed with undeniably cringe meet-your-heroes fantasies. So cringe. Especially the end! OMG. 

 

Anyway, the girls who get it, get it.