Julia Song is Undateable ~ By Susan Lee
Korean American-themed romance novel deals out real talk on living one’s own life despite parental expectations
(Canary Street Press, Toronto, 2025, ISBN #978-1-3354-0252-3)
Review by Joanne Rhim Lee (Summer 2026)
Julia Song is the founder and CEO of Starlight Cosmetics, a brand new K-beauty cosmetics company. Only four years after she started the company at age 26, Starlight is thriving, thanks to its clean, organic ingredients and savvy marketing campaigns. Julia is passionate about her career, and it seems as though she is living the Korean American dream.
However, according to her Korean immigrant parents, she is missing the one thing that means success at age 30 — a husband. Over the years, her friends, colleagues, and family members have tried to set her up on dates, to no avail. Though she is excellent at coming up with business plans and pitching ideas to potential investors, she is admittedly terrible at small talk, as she is very blunt and doesn’t waste time with niceties. One former boyfriend declared her “undateable.”
Julia has never seen her single status as an issue, but this all changes at her grandmother’s 80th birthday party, when she learns that her beloved halmoni is having some health issues, and that her dying wish is for Julia to find a nice man and get married. In addition to being a successful, independent career woman, Julia is also a very dutiful daughter and granddaughter, and she agrees to go out on three dates of her parents’ choosing. And though she is whip-smart, she is also clueless in the art of flirting and dating, so hijinks ensue.
If this plot summary of Julia Song is Undateable, Susan Lee’s first adult romance novel, seems like Netflix’s latest rom-com, it’s because it would indeed make an excellent Asian American romantic comedy, in the same vein as Crazy Rich Asians or Always Be My Maybe. Lee has also written several popular young adult romance novels, including Seoulmates and The Name Drop, so she knows what works.
Now that Julia’s parents have been given the green light, they quickly get to work on lining up three Korean super-suitors. They have to be smart, successful, and most importantly, tall. The search radius is not limited to southern California, but can involve airline travel, even crossing the international date line. Doctors and lawyers get bumped to the top of the list.
There is also the cute son of the Songs’ next-door neighbors, Tae Kim, who is definitely not on the list of super-suitors. Julia used to babysit for him when he was little, and Tae is now the local handyman. He has recently come home to help his parents after his father was diagnosed with cancer. Tae helps out Julia’s parents and many other families with random tasks, and knows about Julia’s three dates through the “Korean Gossip Network” (or KGN), through which every Korean family in the Irvine area knows everybody’s business.
Tae is also quite the ladies’ man, and has a reputation for dating women who then go on to find their future husbands right after his relationship with them ends. Julia’s halmoni knows this, so she asks Tae if she can pay him to date Julia, so that Julia will find her future husband right after her relationship with Tae ends.
He is horrified at the idea of being paid to date someone, especially his former babysitter, so he declines the offer. Instead, he offers to be Julia’s dating coach, to show her how to behave on a date with a potential suitor without making them cry, how to make small talk and ask questions without looking bored, and how to navigate a Korean BBQ restaurant as a vegetarian.
Julia doesn’t speak Korean, but Tae is fluent, so when one of the scheduled dates is with a doctor from Korea, Tae offers to serve as her translator. He also gives her a quick tutorial in K-pop music, as one of the suitors is apparently a Korean pop star. These dates are hilarious and cringy, and would translate well on the big or small screen.
Still, Julia Song is Undateable is not all light, frothy rom-com fun. Beneath the breezy dates-gone-wrong premise, Lee weaves in sharper questions about generational expectations, cultural identity, and what it really means to want a different life than the one your parents envisioned for you. After a few duds, Julia finds that she is indeed dateable, and Susan Lee’s first adult novel is indeed readable.