The Name Drop by Susan Lee
Main Leads: Jessica Lee, Elijah Ri
Setting: United States, New York, New York City
Tropes: Chaebol Male Lead, Office Romance, Mistaken Identity
Genres: Romance, Contemporary, Young Adult
Published On: September 12, 2023
Publisher: Inkyard Press
Format: e-Book
Source: Purchased
Pages: 304
Purchase It: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
When Elijah Ri arrives in New York City for an internship at his father’s massive tech company, Haneul Corporation, he expects the royal treatment that comes with being the future CEO—even if that’s the last thing he wants. But instead, he finds himself shuffled into a group of overworked, unpaid interns, all sharing a shoebox apartment for the summer.
When Jessica Lee arrives in New York City, she’s eager to make the most of her internship at Haneul Corporation, even if she’s at the bottom of the corporate ladder. But she’s shocked to be introduced as the new executive-in-training intern with a gorgeous brownstone all to herself.
It doesn’t take long for Elijah and Jessica to discover the source of the mistake: they share the same Korean name. But they decide to stay switched—so Elijah can have a relaxing summer away from his controlling dad while Jessica can make the connections she desperately needs for college recommendations.
As Elijah and Jessica work together to keep up the charade, a spark develops between them. Can they avoid discovery—and total disaster—with their feelings and futures on the line?
This is the second book that I’ve read by Susan Lee and this time, it’s Hoshi’s book. When I first saw the cover of this book, I immediately thought of Kwon Soonyoung aka Hoshi from Seventeen. I can’t say that anything else about Elijah Ri reminds me of Hoshi. Their personalities are different and Hoshi is more goofy than Elijah was and as much as I like Elijah, I didn’t like him nearly as much as I like Hoshi. Oh well.
So this story follows Jessica Lee as she travels to New York City for an internship with her father’s company. Things are hopping right from the very beginning because Jessica’s trip goes a lot different than she thought. She’s in first class, she arrives and gets an entire brownstone to herself and she gets her own housekeeper too. When she shows up at work to start the internship, she realizes that her trip got swapped with Elijah Ri, the son of the CEO of the company. Jessica and Elijah share the same Korean name so she got everything that he was supposed to get and she’s determined to come clean and fix the confusion but Elijah asks her to keep the charade going. Nobody knows any better and his father doesn’t pay attention to minor details like these so he’ll never know and surprisingly, Jessica agrees to not swap spots. Elijah gets the break he needs and Jessica gets to put herself out there and prove that she’s got what it takes to be an Haneul Corporation employee.
Jessica was a go getter who is determined to make the most of her internship so that she can get good recommendations for her college applications. Elijah is not the son that his father thought he’d be and he struggles with the pressure that his father puts on him. Elijah doesn’t want to run the company after his father retires and thinks that his older sister should get the company cause she works tirelessly for the company and should be rewarded for her efforts…but their father is a real piece of work and only sees the future of the company with a man at the helm.
This book showcases a lot of the issues that I see in k-dramas. South Korea has real issues with women in positions of power and that is reflected in this story. Jessica deals with it by having some piece of shit bosses who made her do “girl jobs” that they wouldn’t ask the men to do and she struggled with trying to stand her ground while at the same time not pissing anyone off and getting yanked out of the intern program.
Elijah, on the other hand was learning how the poor folks live and realizing that it’s a lot more social than the way he lives his life. If he had returned to the brownstone that he was supposed to stay at, he wouldn’t have made friends, he would have been cooped up all by himself the entire time that he was in New York City and he’s grateful that Jessica kept to the switch. As they get to know each other and work together, they develop a friendship that of course blossoms into more and everything was fine until it wasn’t.
I liked both Jessica and Elijah but there just wasn’t anything that really had me hooked. I couldn’t even tell you much about the supporting cast of characters, the other interns, or even Elijah’s sister because they were like background music. I read about them but I didn’t know any of them. I certainly don’t remember much about them either. This was a quick read so it didn’t take long to read the entire thing but after all was said and done, I liked it but I didn’t love it and I know that I won’t remember it so that’s a bit of a let down.
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