If you know me at all, then you know I'm not one for horror films. I'll concede that being freaked out by a movie is an interesting, exhilarating feeling, but I prefer getting eight hours of peaceful sleep every night and not glancing back at my mirror every five seconds to make sure nothing odd is going on in the reflection, thank you very much. That being said, I've wanted to watch The Closet (2020) ever since I first saw the poster and viewed the trailer — and of course because Kim Nam-gil is such a fun actor and who wouldn't want to watch something he's in? Even so, I put it off for several months, because again, sleep. Eventually I gave in though, and smartly had the new Scooby Doo film lined up to watch afterwards since comedy is a brilliant foil for horror.

The premise of The Closet is a man and his daughter move to a new house in what seems to be the middle of nowhere (nothing new here). He doesn't know how to deal with his daughter without his wife, and so for the most part, the two ignore each other. The father is so uncomfortable with things that he considers sending his daughter off to a boarding school to help her acclimate to, well, her new life. Enter: the freaky closet in the child's room.

I don't typically watch horror without a good reason, and right now that reason for me is Kim Nam-gil (he plays a "ghostbuster" character that has a cool backstory that ties him closely with the main plot). Not only is he brilliant, but also his humor is the main reason I enjoyed this. I was fully prepared to be bored by this movie - I typically go in with low expectations - but to my delight, I loved it! One of my favorite things about Korean horror is that it tends to be less scary than American horror, in my opinion. Additionally, Korean horror often brings the supernatural horror aspect back to the horror that is humanity, which gives a lot more depth to the film and also hopefully means I'm not thinking about ghosts for the next three months after watching the film.

So I watched the film, was a tad scared despite playing it in broad daylight, keeping distance between myself and the screen, and making sure the door of my room was wide open, but everything was fine because I watched Scoob! after and laughed at all the corny jokes. A week passes, and I'm completely okay. Hooray, I think to myself, I watched a wonderful horror movie and survived without side effects. Then day eight comes along...and there's the nightmare. Cue sleeping with the chromecast on and jumping at shadows for the next couple days.

But I call it a success, considering I was only frightened for about three days instead of three months. The movie was such fun that I'd do it all over again too, short-term consequences notwithstanding.

Note: This post contains spoilers for the film.

I went to watch Emma with the highest of expectations, only to come home from the theater sorely disappointed.

I admit I never fully watched the trailer - I saw a bit, it looked decent, and I cut it short so I wouldn't spoil myself for the experience - but even so, my expectations were moderately high. The style of the film looked interesting, it was directed by a woman, and it claimed to be a "romantic comedy" — not a term I'd typically associate with the story, although thanks to the whimsical, matchmaking main character, there is already a lot of comedy inherent in Austen's original novel. But I took the film at its word and went in expecting an original adaptation that brings something new to the beloved story of Emma. Except it didn't do this at all, and in fact, I yawned through the whole thing.

One of my biggest complaints is that the film wasn't all that funny. You'd expect some laughs brought about by some new, contemporary insight or commentary on the novel, but instead this film keeps everything the same and only occasionally exaggerates scenes in such a way as to bring out "comedy". The older 2009 BBC adaptation of Emma features the character of Elton cooing excessively over a painting done by Emma of her friend Harriet, all in an attempt to win her favor, although Emma herself doesn't realize this until much later. This new adaption keeps this scene exactly the same, while additionally placing this painting in an obscenely ornate frame that resembles a cuckoo clock more than anything else. This conjures a few snickers from the audience, but that's about it. Similarly, when Knightley finally musters the courage to speak to Emma about his feelings and Emma finally musters the courage to listen, her nose randomly starts bleeding as they're speaking under a tree. This scene probably got the most laughs out of the audience, but I sat there wondering why this nosebleed - more applicable in a Korean drama, in my opinion - was supposed to make me laud the film when there was nevertheless nothing meaningful in that red stripe of blood running down Emma's face and into her mouth. It was an odd and unexpected choice on the director's part, and appreciable in that sense, but it didn't add to the feeling of that well-known scene in any way; in fact, the nosebleed did its best to express emotions that Emma herself simply didn't invoke.

My other main gripe with this latest adaptation is that for a film that was expected to be unique in its depiction of Emma's story, an unfortunate amount of scenes were strikingly similar to those in older adaptations. I rewatched the 2009 mini-series shortly after this film just to make sure it wasn't just my imagination, and indeed it appears that the 2009 adaptation is almost taken as canon. The painting scenes look very similar, as did the picnic scene toward the end — Frank Churchill even slouched on the picnic blanket in a way reminiscent of the older adaptation.

When all is said and done, however, the 2009 adaptation just has so much more heart than the 2020 one ever will. Granted, it has the benefit of having double the runtime, so there's more time to build out relationships and the like (although in my opinion, a more concise film should at least have the benefit of not boring its audiences to sleep). Even so, while this latest adaptation attempts to push the comedy angle and fails even in that - though I will say that Miranda Hart as Miss Bates and Bill Nighy playing Emma's father were the saving graces of this film - the four 2009 episodes actually get you invested in the characters, maintain clear chemistry between the leads (which this film certainly doesn't do), and live up to the original book in a way that is certain to have all Austen fans daydreaming about Mr. Knightley during their A.P. Biology exam (aka me a little less than seven years ago).

Having seen the 1996 and 2009 adaptations before this one, as well as Clueless, I can say with certainty that this is my least favorite out of them all.

It's come to my attention that while I do TOPFIVE Favorite Kdramas posts every year, I've never done any sort of list of books, and I've read some really good ones this year that I want to talk about. Of course, I've also read a lot of not great books this year that did not at all live up to the hype I heard about them, but that's a conversation for another day. All of the books on this list are absolutely brilliant, but I have attempted to order them from most favorite favorite to least favorite favorite, although there may be some overlap because they're all so good.

I literally just finished reading this one — I kind of like that fact that one of the last books I read in 2019 trumps all the other ones read in the past 360-some days. That's not an easy feat. This book is both huge and gorgeous (I dished out on the Waterstones Exclusive, so sue me), and I won't lie: I was very intimidated by both its size and all the love for The Night Circus by the same author, which I still haven't read. This always seemed to me a book you had to think through; it wasn't just something you could read and enjoy. Well, I was right and wrong. You don't really have to think particularly hard - the author does a great job laying everything out; the hard part is definitely in the writing of the book rather than the reading of it - but it also does provoke thought. The story itself - a meta-story of sorts - is so large in its scale, and yet also so small, that it is something you have to wade through. But in a good way — you have to experience it. It's intimidating in the way that The Book Thief is intimidating: it's big, it's fancy, and it's beyond brilliant, but every page enchants the mind. It's hard for me to describe exactly how amazing it is, but I loved every moment of reading this, from page one to the end that's really only another beginning.

I already mentioned this book in another post, but this was about to be my favorite book of the year if The Starless Sea hadn't shown up and stolen its thunder. It's a book about war and segregation and love, and as expected of Julie Berry, it's beautifully written. This aching, lovely story is further encased within the narrative of a trial going on between the gods: Aphrodite and her husband Hephaestus, as well as a few other key mythological players. This is another book that's enchanting from the first page on, and I highly recommend it if you're in the mood for a gorgeous historical fiction or romance.

I hadn't even known that Julie Berry had a book out this year, so I'm extremely glad the cover got my attention.

I also wrote a post about this book — check it out if you want to see the kinds of beautiful illustrations you can find in it plus general flailing. I randomly picked this one up in the bookstore earlier in the year, and what a great decision that turned out to be! It's so rare that I pick up a book without finding it on Goodreads first, plus I just loved it so much and it successfully drew me out of the book slump I was in at the time. It's a cute little YA fantasy novel that combines magic with science, and the romance between the characters was so soft and probably hate-to-love (it's been a while since I read it) considering how much I adore this book. And of course one of the best parts plus one of the reasons I bought it is became there are some really pretty illustrations in it that I just had to own.

This is the only picture book on the list, but it's one of my favorite finds of the year. I kid you not, I cried almost the whole way through. The reason I added the book to my TBR (to-be-read list) is because of the gorgeous art on the cover, but then I saw that the author/illustrator was a POC and I knew it was a must-read. When I finally picked up the book at the library - it was pleasantly large in shape - I was beyond in love (and in tears, of course). The art is gorgeous, and it's amazing that such a compelling story can be told without words. It was a very quick read, but it's not one you're going to forget quickly. Also the puppy is so adorable and I love soft, happy endings.

I wasn't the biggest fan of the first book in the series, City of Ghosts, so I'm very surprised that I not only read, but loved this book. I'm a fan of the author, although not everything she writes ends up becoming a favorite, or even something I enjoy (apparently I read The Near Witch sometime before I purposefully read V.E. Schwab books and I saw on Goodreads that I only gave it two stars — ouch). I hadn't even planned on reading this book, but I picked it up in the middle of my last uni semester and raced through it. I just ended up loving the Parisian setting, the female friendship, and the ghost friend, and even the plot was entertaining, although things weren't as surprising as they would have been if this wasn't written for a Middle Grade audience. I can't wait for the third book!

Hello, everyone! I haven't blogged here in months, but I just took my last uni final exam yesterday (as in yes, I am done with college forever!), and am super psyched to talk about my top five favorite Korean dramas of the year! I will note that all but one of these dramas are from the second half of 2019 — not quite sure if that's because they're more fresh in my head and so I think I love them more, or because these five are all so brilliant that there's no room for the other early 2019 dramas I already talked about in this post. But either way they're brilliant and you must watch them immediately if you haven't already, so let's just get straight into it!

This is hands down my favorite drama of the year, and also the one I watched most recently. Ever since I watched and adored Mystery Queen, I've been looking for a similar drama in terms of brilliant detective/crime cases and two leads with absolutely breathtaking chemistry who have such fun together. I found that earlier this year with Voice 2 - a darker take on the genre, but just as addicting, if not more so - and of course, that just left me wanting more such dramas but not finding any. But then came Catch the Ghost. The leads are brilliant and I have never loved either of them more, and every episode is the finest delight. This drama made me laugh, it made me cry, and I swear just talking about it makes me want to go watch it again. It's perfect in all ways. The drama is about a young woman trying to find her sister's killer (a serial killer dubbed the Subway Ghost), and as part of this attempt, she tries to get a job on the subway police team. There she meets the male lead, a "by the rules" kind of guy who is really not ready to handle this new hurricane of a person who's just blasted her way into the team and thinks rules are suggestions.

Did I swoon or did I swoon? I didn't get around to watching this until it finished airing - and thank goodness, because it would've been a pain to wait for new episodes each week - but I binged the heck out of it and perhaps disregarded my homework more than I should have. The premise pulled me in immediately: a young girl with a heart disease finds out that she's a character in a comic book — and not even the female lead but the supporting character. When she finds out she's expected to die soon, she rebels against the comic, determined to make her own decisions and chase her own love instead of blindly following the author's decisions. The drama ended up being just as amazing and unique as the premise sounds, and it was also so beautifully filmed? I love the actress (who may not be the lead of the comic, but she's definitely the lead of our drama), and of course one of the main draws was Lee Jae-wook who I'm sure we all fell in love with when he played the struggling actor in Search: WWW. I love him when he's playing a cute, nice boy, but even more so when he's an arrogant asshole with daddy issues (he brought back Kim Woo-bin feels from Heirs lol). This is truly a drama that's not to be missed!

Another brilliant story setup, this time by a Netflix drama: an app that tells you when someone in your near vicinity is in love with you. I did not think I would adore this drama as much as I did - especially considering how meh Netflix's My First First Love turned out to be - but errrr I binged all eight episodes in a single night and the cliffhanger definitely destroyed me. Classic Netflix love triangle, but gah, I definitely love one guy more than the other. The most unique aspect of the drama is that it traverses both the characters' high school years as well as their adult years, and they did it pretty well too. There's drama, feels and so much misunderstanding because duh the app is a terrible idea, but like, I need season two right now. I'm really hoping the show gets renewed and we get the second season in early 2020 because the three main characters are great and I'm really invested in their relationships and undoing the misunderstanding between a certain two characters.

Search: WWW is an unforgettable drama, and certainly one of the best of the year. It's a women-centric kdrama with a beautiful, talented cast, amazing writers, gorgeous cinematography and directing, and literally anything you could want in an intelligent, contemporary drama (including man candy LOL). I fell in love with all three of the lead women, and I love how they're all so different and how the drama doesn't present "good" and "bad" as a simple dichotomy. Search: WWW is a character-centered drama that explores relationships, marriage, business, and marketing (the latter through a search engine company that I would love to work for if it was a real company), and each episode is like...well, dessert.  Women supporting women is seriously my favorite thing.

I know Voice 3 isn't perfect - I had a whole rant about it when it finished airing - but apparently I just can't stop myself from adding it to this list regardless. I just love the characters and the drama so much that even a major mishap like that not-so-great ending can't put me off too much. I already discussed my love of Voice 2 earlier in this post, and it's for those same reasons that I was super thrilled to sit down and enjoy Voice 3 week after week while it aired — it was one of the highlights of that uni semester. If you want to give this drama a go, you have to watch Voice 2 first because Voice 3 is a direct continuation of the plot. I'd also highly recommend you start with Voice before watching the second or third season because it comes first and Voice 2 begins from where it leaves off, even though Voice is more stand-alone and isn't as relevant to the rest of the series. TL;DR: you can skip Voice if you're a mega Lee Jin-wook fan, but otherwise you'll get the most out of the drama by watching the seasons in order.

My feelings toward Voice 3 are so incredibly complicated. I loved the first week (which is to say, the first two episodes) of this drama so much, as you can clearly tell by the fangirl-y post I wrote about it. But the rest of the season didn't live up to that first week. Why? Mainly because whereas the first week featured a brilliant Code Zero case that involved saving Korean tourists in Japan, all whilst they were trying to keep Do Kang-woo out of the hands of Japanese detectives, the rest of the season had very few other such cases.

Voice and Voice 2 had roughly a new Code Zero case each week while also having an overarching plot that is taken care of between these cases; Voice 3, however, instead chose to focus on the overarching plot and scatter at most 2-3 cases throughout the entire season. And this was disappointing. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the heck out of this season - no, I genuinely adored it. It wasn't quite as good as Voice 2, but I love all of the characters so much at this point that it didn't matter. Plus it's not that the plot was bad - if anything, the stakes were even higher than in the previous season - it was just that it wasn't as exciting and charming as Voice 2 had been.

Now that everything is said and done, the story behind Do Kang-woo really is quite brilliant, and I really like how things unfolded. I do wish there had been more scenes between Kang Kwon-joo and Do Kang-woo in this season - Voice 2 was ripe with such scenes and cute banter, which is a big part of why I loved it so much - but plot-wise, everything was great. Granted, Do Kang-woo didn't do all that much other than stand around looking angry at the world (and to be fair, the writers of the drama really do love torturing the man), but whatever - I adore his character no matter what he's doing. My biggest problem with this season is, in fact, the ending. I hate it so much.

I was all ready to end the season on a high note, being fully in love with it despite its apparent flaws, when the writers really went and wrote that ending. My biggest concern before the final episode was that there wouldn't be a Voice 4 because no actor in his right mind would be willing to do another season of just standing around and looking pretty, but then the writers did what they did and completely shattered my heart, but in a very boring and frankly, dumb way. It's not even that it doesn't fit with the story - it makes sense - but if that's really what they wanted to do, then they should have at least written it better, i.e. with more emotion and drama. Even the ending of Voice 2 had me in exhilarated shock, whereas not only was the final episode of Voice 3 anticlimactic, but it also left me feeling really unsatisfied and disappointed.

I still love this drama to infinity and beyond - I feel like I haven't found something this much up my alley since Mystery Queen - but if I had the opportunity to erase the ending from my memory and force the writers to write me a new one, would I do it? Yes, a million times yes.

I only watched Voice 2 earlier this year but immediately fell in love with the new cast and especially the new male lead, Lee Jin-wook, who plays Team Leader Do Kang-woo in the drama. The season only had twelve episodes though, so I was extremely excited for Voice 3 which was going to have a full sixteen episode run. This is the drama that just finished airing yesterday, and while it did not end up living up to the previous season, I still adored and enjoyed every moment. The stakes were so much higher this season and the plot was intense, but at the same time, the writers didn't include many Code Zero cases, which is what the Voice drama series is known and loved for. Even so, this is one of my favorite dramas of the year so far and I'm going to go sit in a corner and cry now that it's over.

For anyone who hasn't watched the drama series, it's about a Golden Time Team that aims to solve 911 call cases within the "golden time" when they're more likely to solve the case and save the victim. The main character Kang Kwon-joo can hear sounds other cannot, which is why she's so good at her job. I'd recommend starting from Voice and going in order from there, but if you really can't wait and just want to see Lee Jin-wook in action, you can start with Voice 2 and follow it up with Voice 3.

A friend actually recommended this to me earlier in the year, and the convincing factor was the absolutely hilarious teaser trailers that showcase just how wacky the main characters of this drama are. I finally watched it and the drama was an absolute delight. It's a legal drama, but it's super unique because the male lead is literally the Sherlock Holmes of the legal world: he's nuts, he's fun, he values money above all else, and he has never lost a case in his lifetime. But then he meets this uptight female lawyer with exactly the opposite beliefs and they clash in the best and most amusing ways possible. There's no outright romance but the chemistry and adorable situations are plenty fulfilling - just how I like it. If you're looking for a fun time with a great plot and story to boot, then you'll definitely want to check this one out.

Kingdom aired pretty early in the year as a Netflix Original and it immediately blew me away. Think Train To Busan, except before there were trains. It's a historical drama that's all about zombies; there are only six episodes and each of them is freaking brilliant. The cinematography, acting, story - everything was super well done, and there is in fact going to be a season two to the series. I don't have much to say about this other than watch it because it's super good and you will not regret it.

This drama was sold to audiences as a young woman falling in love and finding her place in the world - all with a little help from a watch that allows her to manipulate time. However, one day, after using the watch too many times, she suddenly wakes up and finds herself looking and feeling like a 70-year old woman. The Light in Your Eyes is probably one of the most painful, but also the most beautiful, dramas that I have watched this year; I spent whole episodes just sobbing into my blanket. Everything about this drama is perfect: the chemistry between the two leads is off the charts and intense, and Han Ji-min and Nam Joo-hyuk and truly wonderful actors. There's also a plot twist toward the end that will shock you to your core, but it also adds that much more depth to this drama and elevates it to a new level of excellence. I am so impressed with the cast, crew, and writers of this drama. This seriously beautiful story is one that I will never forget.

This was one of my most anticipated dramas from the first half of the year because, hello, books! And after watching it, I can confidently say that this drama loves books just as much as you and I do. The premise of the drama reminded me a bit of the show Younger (which I think some drama is actually adapting in the near future): Kang Dan-yi is recently divorced and looking for a job, but no one will hire her because she hasn't worked in quite a few years. Desperate, she lies about her age and gets a job at a publishing company, but it just so happens that her best friend is an author and chief editor at that company (this is Lee Jong-suk's role) and he's harbored a crush on her for years. The noona romance in this drama is unbelievably adorable, and I fell in love with all the bookish scenes and moments and circumstances! I highly recommend this drama if you're looking for all the cuteness.

These two make me want to throw my CS degree to the side and work in publishing.