Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror meets Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings in a meditation that blends memoir and cultural criticism to explore how the author’s love affair with K-pop has shaped her sense of self, charting K-pop’s complex coming-of-age through some of its biggest idols.

I’ll Love You Forever: Notes from a K-Pop Fan is a smart, poignant, constantly surprising essay collection that considers the collision between stratospherically popular music and our inescapably personal selves. Giaae Kwon delves into the influence of K-pop artists, from H.O.T. to Taeyeon to IU to Suga of BTS, and reveals how each illuminated and shaped her own life.

In using intimate experiences to examine larger cultural topics, this singular work breaks new ground in its consideration of K-pop. I’ll Love You Forever blends the critical with the personal while spanning the history of K-pop from the perspective of a bilingual and bicultural Korean American. Kwon interweaves profiles of different K-pop idols with topics such as Korea’s obsession with academics, and its attitudes toward plastic surgery, and female sexuality, among others. Combining insightful critique and adoring analysis, I’ll Love You Forever provides listeners with a fuller picture of a culturally and socially complex industry and the machine and heart behind its popularity. Above all, Kwon offers up the passion of a superfan, finding joy in K-pop along the way.