Super Fake Love Song | David Yoon Does It Again

4.5/5 stars

Sunny Dae is a self-proclaimed nerd. He and his two best friends spend their time creating videos on how to DIY items for LARPing. When Cirrus Soh moves to town and mistakes Sunny’s older brother’s room for Sunny’s, the friends are led down a rabbit hole of pretending to be cool. Pretending to be in a rock band together, that is. Sunny tries to keep up with the lie, but it soon becomes clear this cannot go on forever. Sunny must decide whether the lie is worth it and if he wants to go back to who he was before. 

After reading Frankly in Love, I couldn’t wait for Super Fake Love Song. I was not disappointed. While it didn’t touch on being marginalized due to one’s race, it did focus heavily on being marginalized because of your interests and hobbies. As a fellow video creator and Asian-American, I definitely related to Sunny’s “nerdy” tendencies and passions. It was the passage on page 258 that summed it up perfectly. Whether you are a rockstar or a video creator, you share your passion with others and that is when they really see you. They see your authentic self.

I really appreciated the overall theme of wanting to fit in and sometimes changing who you are to do it. I resonated with this as a transracial adoptee – changing myself to fit in and wanting to keep it up once I saw that people accepted that version of myself. While Frankly in Love, hit the racism and microaggressions I have experienced, Super Fake Love Song touched on the struggles any reader can experience. 

The pacing of the story was solid. It moved quickly enough and counted down to a talent show when Sunny and his friends would finally have to prove they are the rockstars they’ve been saying they are. I appreciated the writing style as well. The first person narrative had me believing I was reading the thoughts of a high schooler and interacting with his friends as well.

Super Fake Love Song was another wonderful book by David Yoon. It was a story about acceptance, loyalty, and embracing one’s authentic self. Even though it is classified as Young Adult Fiction, it wold be a great read for anyone.