Recensione Gods & Comics di Kat Cho

 

Titolo: Gods & Comics

Autore: Kat Cho

Editore: Nancy Paulsen Books

Data di pubblicazione: 21 aprile 2026

Il mio voto: 4.5/5

Trama:

Seventeen-year-old junior class vice president Grace Bak has her entire future all mapped out with plans to become a doctor like her parents. But the weight of Grace’s own daunting expectations lead to debilitating panic attacks that have made her a virtual outcast at school even to her longtime friend and crush. To make matters worse, her grandmother and only real support system has just died. Halmoni was the glue that kept Grace’s little family together, especially after she and her dad lost her mother to cancer when Grace was too little to have many memories of her. To cope with the grief of another loss, Grace starts a webcomic inspired by the Korean myths her halmeoni used to tell her as a child.

In the webcomic, Sun God, Grace spins the tale of Korean god Haemosu and his love Yuhwa, but with a twist —the two gods are trapped in the bodies of teenagers and worst of all cursed to attend high school. Grace never expected her comic to go viral, but it has, and more astonishingly, the fandom has also somehow conjured the real Haemosu and now it’s up to Grace to get him back home. Except when she starts to fall for Hae, sending him home is the last thing she wants to do. More troubling, Hae isn’t the only god to suddenly reappear. Hae’s sworn enemy has also been brought to the mortal realm and is set on destroying Hae all while infecting humanity with a deadly disease. As an epic battle between gods loom, Hae is without his powers, so it may fall to Grace to fight back against a vengeful god hellbent on punishing anyone who gets in his way.

Ringrazio Netgalley e il gruppo Penguin per avermi fornito una copia digitale in cambio di una mia onesta opinione.

To read the review in English click here.

Reading this book was a pleasure: it flows beautifully. All in all, the plot is simple and light, and reading it was relaxing: it's the perfect book to read while sitting in the park on a spring day or on holiday this summer. 

However, this does not make it a trivial book, because the author also deals with very topical issues (which are increasingly close to our hearts and are being addressed to), such as perfectionism, anxiety, panic attacks and grief.

I also really liked how modernity and current events are present in the idea of a story to be published online in instalments (the webtoon), which becomes almost a meta-narrative element because the chapters of the novel are very short, almost as if they were designed for online serialisation. But it also nods to the current growing “mass” interest in Korea and its culture.

One flaw in this book, however, was the imbalance I perceived in the ending: it seemed to me that the final resolution was too quick and simple compared to the longer and more measured first part, which introduced the story and the characters. 

Speaking of the characters, there are not many of them, and the most distinctive are Grace and Haemosu, but even though the supporting and secondary characters are less developed, they are not flat.

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