Summer is just a season
Author's Note

The hotly anticipated novel "Summer is Just a Season" that has captured the hearts of tens of thousands of readers this summer.
The one-of-a-kind limited edition Winter Edition 'Winter is just a season'*

Kim Seo-hae's full-length novel, "Summer is Just a Season," which became a bestseller immediately after publication and established itself as a summer novel through word of mouth among readers with comments such as "I put an index on every page" and "I underlined and colored the entire page," has returned in a limited winter edition.

In "Summer is Just a Season," which depicts teenage girls who are immature in friendship, Christmas is a turning point in the relationship where the main character, Jenny, notices the feelings of the clumsy but pure Hannah.
As the season gets colder, you can enjoy the original "Winter is Only a Season" that has been dressed in new colors and rainbows symbolizing Christmas by removing the cover, and the short-lived and fleeting adolescence is depicted in summer colors.
The title 'Winter is just a season' was created with a slightly different color gradation for each book to allow you to preserve your own unique rainbow color, increasing its collection value.

In the middle of winter, a season that is dazzlingly cool, gorgeous, yet lonely, reminiscent of childhood, let's hold in our hands a piece of the warmth of last summer, delivered by "Summer is Just a Season," as we cross seasons.

“I searched for friends, and I didn’t hide my lonely face.”
About the harsh, dazzling, and poignant friendship of the past season

A writer who diagnoses the mind with the most accurate language
Rabiu and Ring, Kim Seo-hae's new novel

“The main character is so much like me,” “She captures the feeling of loneliness with precise sentences,” “Her expressive power is amazing,” and the new novel “Summer is Just a Season” by Kim Seo-hae, the author of “Rabiu and Ring,” who has diagnosed readers’ hearts with the most accurate language, has been published by Wisdom House.

In the 2000s, when the illusion of the American Dream was fading away, ten-year-old Jenny suddenly immigrated to the United States due to her parents' decision.
White kids are just mean to Asian girls, and Jenny has to 'adapt' and 'grow' by cutting and wearing herself down to survive.
One summer, while desperately learning English and barely making a small space for herself by hanging around friends, Hannah, an immigrant from Korea, appears.
Hannah, who is bullied but still stubbornly demands to be accepted as she is.
Jenny feels sorry for Hannah, who is in the same situation as her, but also pities him for not being able to adapt.

With Hannah's arrival, Jenny begins to resemble the white children she so desperately hated.
Getting close to Hannah, who was hated by the children, was like being separated from the group once again.
Jenny tries to isolate Hannah by imitating the gestures and speech of white people, such as “dancing in clothes that don’t fit”, but Hannah doesn’t care and approaches Jenny, saying she wants to “speak English well like you” and “make lots of friends”.

The third summer arrived as time passed, with cynicism and innocence, longing and jealousy intertwined, and Jenny and Hannah drifted apart and closer.
The two end up at a lakeside gathering, where they are invited by the most popular white girls in school.
And an hour later, only one person emerges from the lake.

In a time when friends were everything, children were immature in friendship.
The growing pains of girls struggling toward a place they can never reach.

Jenny's parents, who lost their jobs in the aftermath of the IMF foreign exchange crisis, try to start a new life in the paradise called America.
However, the gap between the American Dream and America is not narrowing, and Asian immigrant families without foundation or capital are forced to move between poor and slightly less poor neighborhoods, facing discrimination head-on.
While her parents commute between the factory, restaurant, and laundry, Jenny, who “doesn’t earn a penny” on her own while “her mom and dad feed and put her to bed,” grows up with a loneliness that is etched into her bones as a being on the edge who cannot belong anywhere.
Unfamiliar with English, she is ostracized even by her Asian classmates, and teased as a lesbian because she has short hair and is good at soccer. She is left unsure where she should fit in: Korean or American, male or female, child or adult.


“Summer is Just a Season” suggests that the sadness of not being able to find one’s place may be resolved through “a sense of love and solidarity” and friendship.
Adolescence, when friends felt like the world to them and they would let go of someone's hand without hesitation in order to fit in with the group, resembled the small American town where Jenny lived.
Like Hannah, who discovered and cherished love in the mere season of summer, I think of friends from a bygone era who brought me “absurd joy and monstrous pain.”
It brings back to mind the loneliness that destroyed us, and yet the love and friendship that saved us from destruction.
And let us reach out to those who are still wandering in “sunless caves.”
Let's decide not to choose between Korean and American, man and woman, child and adult.
Let's go beyond the choices, erase the boundaries that divide you and me, and go together to a place where there is no heaven or hell.
This is what Jenny wants to tell us through her long reflection.

The story is where the hand passes.
This novel began with the hope that someone would hold my hand.
(……) I realized this while writing.
Don't wait to be grabbed, reach out.
That you have to approach the person who is waiting first.
You have to grab it without worrying about what others think.
Only then will the shackles be broken._〈Author's Note〉