연남동 빙굴빙굴 빨래방

"삼켜내기 힘든 하루가 있잖아. 그럼 퉤 뱉어버려. 굳이 그렇게 쓴 걸 꾸역꾸역 삼켜낼 필요는 없어. 마음도 체한다, 여름아."

In a tiny, 24-hour laundromat in the middle of Yeonnam neighborhood, a diary lies on the counter. In this diary are drawings, short scribbles, and even requests for advice. Those who felt they are not heard in their real lives find an escape in the cozy laundromat; they breathe in the warm cotton scent and flip open the notebook. A pen lies nearby.

I was pleasantly surprised by this story! When I saw it would be a healing, comforting story about people in 연남동 (which I've been to, and isn't really the small town I'd imagine this kind of story would take place in initially lol) finding peace at the laundromat, I just thought it'd be a quick look into people's lives and the author pushing some overly positive 'you can do it!' messages onto the readers. While this is kind of true, I found the story was more as I got to see into the lives of different people. Switching POVs are always a gamble, because some characters or their stories just don't match up to others. Yet I found something to enjoy about each POV (almost all) and felt for each character's struggles.

What I liked most about this book was that the problems were not all cut and dry-- there weren't easy answers, and there weren't always solutions. Despite this, I felt like we were able to see the characters grow and gain some happiness back. I do wish we got to go back to their POVs once their story was 'done' and see how they're doing from their own perspective...I also have some questions that were never answered lol. This story is definitely a little too good to be true, but it was really nice to read. It was nice to see how these characters helped each other, and how small acts (and big acts) can mean so much to others. I also liked seeing them cross paths, and how their stories were interconnected by the end!

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You might want to know that the stories in this book include money issues, parent-child problems, job advancement, animals being hurt, and suicide by a side character (in the past, but there is a flashback).

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Language wise, I didn't find it toooooo difficult for me. The part I think could be a struggle would be vocabulary wise, as I did have to look up words rather often. The vocabulary portions I needed help most with where the scenes about selling land and about voice-phishing scams since they had a lot of specific vocab there. I didn't notice difficult grammar personally. There's also some scenes with 사투리 so if you struggle with that you might need to do some looking up.

Also yes, I cried a couple times so 5 stars for heart strings being pulled ^^