I love Zen Cho's style of writing and characters and enjoyed this romance set in Malaysia. Well plotted, entertaining, it made me root for the characters
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

The Friend-Zone experiment turned out to be a massive failure and THANK GOD because Renee and Ket Siong are meant for each other and I personally don't know why they would ever think they weren't simply meant to be together (and definitely NOT as "Just Friends").

I loved the brutal look at 2 very different family dynamics and how though wildly different they can massively mess with your head or push you to be great even with the best or worst intentions.

The romance was lovely but it was not exactly the main plot of the book, which I think is actually to its merit. Zen Cho is able to craft an interesting story looking at corruption, kidnapping and business intrigue while also developing a convincing romance. Is it done well? Yes! Does a part of me wish there was a tiiiiiny more depth to both aspects? Also Yes!Do I desperately want more info on Steven and Ket Hao? YES (a novella, a special chapter - what happened on that video call, and in that kitchen, what happens nextttt ahhhh...I'll take anythiiiing!).

Overall, a great book and super fun. I'm going to miss the absolute icon that is Natalie.

Thank you to Zen Cho and Netgalley for this e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

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The Friend Zone Experiment was unexpected.

Renee, to me is a mix of ‘Seri’ from ‘Crash Landing On You’ and Serena Van Der Woodsen (the better parts). Her character is contextually unrelatable yet emotionally so close to my heart. I love that she is this talkative, confident and strong- willed woman despite the shit that people give her. She is powerful and can manage her business without needing to succumb to corruption like the silly men in her life.

Ket Siong’s story was unique. His urge to know the truth, to find some resolution to his grief and confusion was heartbreaking. He was sweet and caring even when life dealt him with the worst of things. I appreciate this so much because it’s hard to find a love interest in literature these days that isn’t dark and brooding.

I appreciate how true the author stays true to the character’s Asian heritage. The main love interest’s name, for one, is a prime example of an author unafraid to share and embrace culture. Whenever I read a book inspired by Asian heritage or with characters of Asian descent, it’s a little disappointing to see characters with anglicised. This is why I respect this book so much. Ket Siong is unabashedly Ket Siong - no abbreviation or nickname.

London as stage for the events of the book is EVERYTHING. Zen Cho is amazing at making London this exotic, emblematic playground of glitz and glamour. We constantly get references to locations, cultural norms and traditions that make the city as alive as the characters. It isn’t just a random location for the story to take place, the characters interact with the setting so much and so meaningfully.

The plot point I appreciate most is that of the corruption in large corporations in South- East and the exploitation of villages for logging. It’s hard to find a book that introduces you to problems such as these and this book has definitely made me want to research socio- economic dilemmas occurring in these areas in the future.

I loved this book, it’s both heartwarming and inspiring and also shocking in that though the family has everything, advantage in wealth and a privileged lifestyle they lack the free love that you have within a family that doesn’t come with conditions or rules, that leads to the main character’s exile and the fact she feels at first that she has to prove her worth to her family for them to accept who she is, it broke me. The romance is there but it feels warm and supportive and dare I say it I am getting Jane Austen’s Persuasion vibes. If that doesn’t make you want to read it I don’t what will.

The Friend Zone Experiment by Zen Cho is the first modern contemporary romance book by the author who mainly wrote fantasy and I was so excited to pick this up when I first heard the news about it. This is a second chance romance with family dramas mixed in and working on each others' goals in life.

Honestly, this is just an okay book for me. The romance is not so swoon worthy but it is very realistic. I'm not a huge fan of going back and forth between present and past but I understand why it had to be the way that it is.

I was expecting what happened to Stephan to be more unexpected and wowed but again, this is quite a realistic book and as we Malaysians say it: pijak di bumi yang nyata. The same goes with Renee's decision with the family business.

All in all, I recommend you to read this book.

I enjoyed this one a lot! It wasn't amazing AMAZING, but still a good read overall. I found the themes of ethics, corruption and family struggles quite interesting to add in a romance novel and I enjoyed the romance plot as well, although, I'd say it sometimes felt like it was actually a subplot more than the main plot of this book. Still a great story and I would definitely recommend it.

Renee Goh has an enviable life, growing her own Instagram-friendly clothing business, Virtu, dating a Taiwanese pop star and living in a posh London flat left her by her aunt.

But she's estranged from her family, ends up working extremely long days and has just been dumped by the boyfriend. So it's perhaps not suprising that when she bumps into another ex, Yap Ket Siong, at a V&A do, she spends a night with him. Surely they can just remain friends?

Unfortunately, there is unfinished business from their previous breakup - business which touches on Renee's father's desire to hand on his own firm, a major conglomerate based back home in Malaysia, to one of his three kids. Renee could be back in the fold, all she has to do is impress father (and outdo her very competitive brothers...). But what might the impact be on Ket Siong - and should she care? Suddenly that friend zone begins to look more like a very unstable fence to sit on, with passion one side, cold hard business on the other and perhaps, murky secrets on both.

The Friend Zone Experiment was a terrific read. Renee is an engaging main character, a woman who knows what she wants, is basically together and organised and definitely not ready to get pushed off course by romantic currents. And yet, at some level, she is still hurt by what happened between her and Ket Siong ten years before. As is he. Renee doesn't, though, know the full story - and I enjoyed seeing that teased out, with flashbacks and revelations. Yes it's one of those scenarios where people are hiding things for each others' supposed good, where there are misconceptions and assumptions (cue Renee's judgy but supportive pal Nathalie). Beneath all this are the bones of a thriller plot involving kidnap, stolen documents and murky secrets - but Zen Cho has the confidence to leave that sketchy and focus on the impact of events on her cast of appealing characters.

Did somebody say "appealing characters"? I have to mention Ket Siong at this point, of course I do, he is the epitome of an appealing, no downright attractive, character - certainly to Renee, despite what he did ten years before. An honourable, somewhat tortured soul, he spent years putting duty ahead of self - as, in a slightly different way, has Renee. She was brought up learning that business and money always comes before family, with the result that her rebellion against a highly patriarchal father has been expressed by... founding her own business and working night and day at it.

With those secrets from the past reaching out, will Renee and Ket Siong be able to sort out what's real and what's imagined, satisfy the constraints of duty and love, and, above all, keep those they care for safe? Deftly plotted, fun to read and with great heart, The Friend Zone Experiment keeps us guessing, serving up thrills, excitement and a powerful, tearjerking finale.

Strongly recommended, whether you've read Zen Cho's earlier fantasy works such as Sorcerer to the Crown, The True Queen and Black Water Sister - or not.

The Friend Zone Experiment by Zen Cho is a delightful and witty romantic comedy that explores the fine line between friendship and love. Cho’s sharp and engaging writing brings the chemistry between the characters to life, making their dynamic both relatable and heartwarming. The story delves into themes of vulnerability, trust, and the risks involved in taking a friendship to the next level, all while peppering in plenty of humor and charming dialogue. With its clever plot and endearing protagonists, The Friend Zone Experiment is a feel-good read that captures the complexities and joys of navigating love in the modern world.

The Friend Zone Experiment is a fun k-drama in book form. There's as much romance as there is intrigue going on in the background. I really liked the dynamics between the two main characters, Ket Siong and Renee.

A tale as old as time what if you both friendzoned each other without realising it.

Such a cute romance as part of a much larger
multilayered plot. Full of interwoven storylines, international business , sibling rivalry and scandal.

This is not a cute little rom com or purely spicy smut book. This is so much more real and engaging plot with romance.

Characters are interesting and book is beautifully written however I did not love it. If you are a big romance lover then I think this would be right up your sleeve. I do love the odd romance novel however this did not do it for me.

I do think that it was a good book just not my taste. Thank you so much for the early copy.

The cover is also stunning!

This was a bit of a funny one: the cover gives it a romcom flavour as does the blurb but actually it centres around unethical logging practices in Sumatra. It takes characters from three families in Malaysia (via Singapore and sometimes now in London) and mixes them up in a web of intrigue. Renée Goh has a charmed life going out with a singer and running her own business, but she's run away from her own dysfunctional family until her dad reaches out, looking for an heir to his business. Ket Siong is the boy who dumped her a decade ago at university: it turns out he has a family connection with both her family business and a huge conglomerate that's implicated in the disappearance of his brother's best friend, Stephen, who was campaigning against the destruction of Indigenous forest. They meet again but can they overcome all these links and dodgy dealings? But the book is mainly about Renée's ballsy ambition and uncompromising attitude towards her slimy brother and her ex, who pops up again. Again, nice not to have a mediocre White man as the love interest, though! So it was interesting and almost thriller-y but not what I thought it would be. The author acknowledges the author of "The Sarawak Report", Claire Rewcastle Brown, from which she gained inspiration.

My review published 4 September: https://librofulltime.wordpress.com/2024/09/04/august-netgalley-update-houghton-nava-and-cho/

I'm trying to figure out what I feel about this one. I do quite like Zen Cho's fantasy works - and I especially love the Malaysiana she brings into her stories. She's especially deft at capturing the Malaysian Auntie Voice.

The usual "not quite my genre, bla bla" comments apply here. This is straight up realistic fiction, not a ghost or supernatural creature in sight! The style feels like a throwback to her earlier short story style, not so much her long-form fantasy style. (I haven't gotten round to Black Water Sister, which may have been the beginnings of the shift?) This isn't a bad thing. I do like that voice and I want to see more of it in fiction. However, I don't think I've read a romance (as the main plot) in a while (if I have ever! haha), so there were bits that felt a little draggy here and there, especially where everyone's keeping secrets and not telling anyone important stuff. Then again, that's also the bits I get annoyed with in all kinds media and without which there would be no story, so, eh.

MAYBE what's throwing me off is the whole, uh, sub-plot that it's wrapped around. It hits very close to real-life happenings in Malaysia. Maybe someone who isn't based here would just read it as fiction (I'm seeing a lot of K-drama references in other reviews) but I'm also going like OH THE SARAWAK REPORT. OH CLARE REWCASTLE-BROWN. OH 1MDB! ALL THE ILLEGAL LOGGING. OBVIOUSLY THEY KIDNAPPED AND KILLED HIM WHAT DID YOU THINK. Which also makes me wonder whether the stuff we read as fiction from other countries hits as hard for their readers in the same way.

Cho brings up the Malaysian/Singaporean family dynamics really, really well - which adds to the ultra-realism of this novel. The family squabbles! The expectations of marriage (and grandchildren)! The fight over who pays for dinner! All that annoying one-upmanship... ugh. Though I can't help but feel that Ket Siong is something of a wish-fulfilment fantasy - he's a little too good to be true.

There's also a lot of corporate drama (and some sexual harassment) going on, plus a heavy dose of family loyalty vs ethics considerations. Do you keep the peace in order to save your family's face/reputation? Do you let yourself love the person whose family has destroyed your own? CAN you put aside your own personal boundaries if that's going to help your family business?

It isn't quite a light read (despite "romcom" being thrown around), but it does have a Happily Ever After. I don't know the genre well enough to say if it'll be a hit for romance readers, but I'd say it's a solid rep of how Malaysian society works (even displaced as they are in London) if you're looking for that.

Contemporary women’s fiction, chick lit, drama. Minor romance.

A thought-provoking, K-drama-esque romance that was everything I imagined it would be and more!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC.

Unfortunately, I had to DNF this book. I found it a tad confusing initially but still decided to push through until I realised the title is quite misleading - what you think you're going to get, isn't what you're getting at all!

Very mixed feelings about this book. I came at it from a place of genuine positive curiosity - I love Zen Cho in short form SFF, and really liked her novel Black Water Sister - and I was looking forward to seeing her take on the romance genre, but I can't say I loved it. It was a quick read, and had some resonant elements, but didn't resonate as a whole - overall, not on par with her SFF work.

First of all, I think packaging and titling it like a cheery beach read romcom that hints at two people fail to date each other as a contrived experiment sends entirely the wrong signal about what kind of book this is. It's neither cheery nor a romcom. The bones of the book are set in Asian intergenerational traumas and secrets and power plays, and yes, there is a romance happening in a way that links two such family stories.

Secondly, the overall tone of the book suffered from trying to be several things at once - pay homage to well-loved kdrama cliches but also make it real and accessible like a London immigrant story, ridiculous scheming between ultrarich heirs and serious exploration of the price of corruption... These things came together, and instead of elevating this book they kind of toned each element down to a muted tone, like a bunch of bright paints neutralizing each other into earthy grey. It wasn't funny and ridiculous enough to lean into kdrama, trying to make Renee relatable made this weirdly middle-class real London, and the tonal switch between Renee's and Ket Siong's chapters looked like they belong in different stories altogether, At one point I caught myself thinking that I could have enjoyed this book more if it was just the story of KS's family and none of the trappings of rich people drama.

Thanks to Netgalley for an early review copy.

This book explored family dynamics and the relationships that test us, showing trying to win parents approval coupled with the dilemma of what ifs / breaking the friendzone. This was a very entertaining book for me and I read it quickly.

This book is a romance in disguise and I have mixed feelings about it. It’s as much a love story as a political and family-saga style thriller, but somehow it didn’t work for me because the genres are not well integrated in my opinion. It’s like Zen Cho had two plots and couldn’t decide which one she wanted to be the main plot and which the subplot or rather the background. I believe she wanted to write a second chance romance set in a family drama with all of the ingredients of an east Asian family story set in the west. Giving the same weight to these two plots makes the book seem unbalanced instead of well planned and as a result I can’t feel anything for the main couple, there’s no chemistry between them although I really liked them both as individuals.

In short, there are so many things happening between them together and on their own that there’s no room for them to develop feelings. You have to believe they are there because they’re telling you, but it stays on the page, it doesn’t reach the reader or better said, it didn’t reach me. I was rooting for them and hoping that at some point they would find some kind of romantic relief and that their relationship wouldn’t sound so forced so empty. Especially because the heroine was a corageous woman and the hero was a golden retriever. But their burdens were too heavy and in the end that made me lose hope. Sometimes romantic comedy have too much comedy and therefore you don’t take it seriously, in this case we have romantic drama and it’s hard not to take it too seriously.

On the positive side, the writing was quite good. Very visual and down to earth and I really believed it would have worked better as a TV production. More mature a book than what I’ve read so far in Zen Cho’s bibliography, more adult. I just prefer when she writes fantasy.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this eARC of 'The Friend Zone Experiment' by Zen Cho.

You know, I went into this expecting lightheartedness and just excitement but this was a struggle to force myself to get through and I don't know, it felt uncomfortable. I enjoyed 'Black Water Sister' which is a major contrast from this novel so maybe I feel uncomfortable by the fact this isn't natural writing for Cho.

Following a break-up with her current boyfriend, Renee bumps back into ‘the one that got away’. But with a position in her father’s company on the line, plus her drive to grow her own business, and all the drama that comes with both, is there too much baggage from the past?

If you’re a lit fic reader looking to dabble in romance, I feel like this would be the perfect book for you. But for me, an avid rom com reader, something about this book just didn’t feel right for me and I didn’t love it like I wanted to.

Thank you NetGalley and Pan MacMillan for the ARC.