October 15, 2024
"My twenties weren't what I had wanted them to be when I was in my teens," almost-30 Noh Inji admits. For seven years, she's been working at Wedding & Life, "an exclusive matchmaking company with a huge reputation," on the third floor's New Marriage department, where the most VIP clients can hire an FW (field wife) or FH (field husband) for a year-long contract. Inji has just finished her latest FW marriage, to a divorced music producer, and has a week off before her next assignment. While waiting, she agrees to a blind date with an unemployed rice-cake maker that quickly turns disastrous, from stalking to, well, disappearing. In an "extremely rare" occurrence, Inji gets requested for a remarriage to the music producer. For commitment-phobic Inji, complications loom. Kim's sensational English-language debut, already an upcoming Netflix series, began as a 13-student Australian university workshop project that proved so successful that it earned international publication. With scathing deftness, Kim exposes gender inequity, female sexuality, family dysfunction, and the suffocating hypocrisy of social norms.
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October 28, 2024
Kim makes her English-language debut with the tantalizing story of a Korean hired bride and the company that employs her. Noh Inji, 29, works as a wife at New Marriage, a secret division of a matchmaking service that allows clients to live as if they’re married while providing the option to terminate the relationship without having to go through a real divorce. After the end of her fourth marriage contract, to music producer Han Jeong-won, she’s set up on a date outside of her company’s client pool with a man named Om Tae-seong. When Inji rejects Tae-seong, he keeps pursuing her—even after she enters into a rematch marriage with Jeong-won. Tae-seong’s disruptions ring alarm bells at New Marriage, and they dispatch a team of agents to scare him off. While happy to be rid of her stalker, Inji can’t shake the guilt she feels about Tae-seong’s fate, and she asks Jeong-won to help her find him. The investigation takes her deep into New Marriage’s secrets, and as she learns unsettling details about its operations, she reflects on her lingering grief over a childhood friend’s suicide. Kim’s layered and well-constructed novel is packed with intrigue and surprising twists. Readers will be on the edge of their seats until the final page. Agents: Jackie Yang, Eric Yang Agency; Emily Randle, Randle Editorial.