When Lee Yeongju burns out at work & leaves her husband, she finds solace in pursuing her childhood dream of opening a bookshop. Her goal is to bring joy to other readers in Seoul & to get back into reading, a pastime she enjoyed back in middle school before she got caught up in the competitiveness of high school, university, & the corporate world. Yeongju & her new friends learn to slow down, enjoy life outside the rat race, & allow themselves not to conform to societal expectations. Hwang Bo-Reum’s debut novel, Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop, a charming story of these great messages, puts the bookshop as a main character, not unlike Days at the Morisaki Bookshop.

The title comes from Hyunam-dong, a (presumably) fictional neighborhood in Seoul that’s caught between the old and new. One of the Korean characters in the name Hyunam-dong means “rest”. And it’s rest that Yeongju is after once she leaves behind the corporate world & her marriage. She views this as a good sign. — Susan Blumberg-Kason, Asian Review of Books