Susan
This is the truest modern romance—frenemies to lovers, built on tension, truth, and the slow, intentional act of discovering love. A story that asks: What if resistance is the first step toward connection?”
One of the most extraordinary things about reading is how it offers instant intimacy: the chance to meet anyone, anywhere, anywhen—and understand them. Stories let us enter lives radically different from our own, and still recognize the shared desires, drives, fears, and hopes that make us human. That’s why representation in storytelling isn’t just a checkbox—it’s a bridge. It invites us into someone else’s lived experience and shows us that emotional truth isn’t bound by identity, but shaped by it—offering space to recognize the parts of ourselves we hadn’t named yet, while celebrating what makes us beautifully unique.
And that’s why Behind Frenemy Lines deserves both applause and scrutiny. Zen Cho sets out to tell a story about workplace power dynamics, emotional constraint, cultural identity, and romantic tension—all filtered through the overlapping worlds of law and love.
Kriya Rajasekar is ambitious, magnetic, and professionally cornered. After an inappropriate advance from her mentor-boss at a conference, she invents a fictional boyfriend to deflect attention—only to have her rival, Charles Goh, mistakenly assigned that role in a well-meaning but misguided intervention. What begins as a defensive charade becomes a slow-burning entanglement, sharpened by proximity and softened by quiet revelation.
Charles isn’t your typical romantic lead. He narrates his chapters like a deposition—clipped, formal, emotionally distant. In early scenes, his POV reads like redacted testimony: precise, rigid, almost like a screenplay for a courtroom drama. Cho’s stylistic choice mirrors his inner restrictions brilliantly, though it comes at a cost. For readers like me—who view dialogue as the heart’s translator—it can feel like a wall. Clever, yes. But emotionally withheld to the point of disconnection.
Kriya, by contrast, commands the page with vitality and clarity. Her narration draws you in like a moth to flame, and it’s through her lens that Charles’s carefully curated persona begins to soften. Their wonderfully friction-fraught relationship chips away at his walls—not in melodrama, but through humor, awkward gestures, and quiet empathy. Honestly, he’s the most Darcy-esque character I’ve read in years: all fumbles, blushes, and lawyerly deflections. And while his initial stiffness frustrated me, the gradual emergence of his emotional depth eventually earned my investment.
This novel tackles heavy themes: sexual harassment, cultural flattening, and the pressure to package identity as palatable. And it does so within a narrative that’s bold, sometimes uneven, and quietly experimental—but ultimately worth wrestling with.
I’m so glad I was gifted this book—if not, I might’ve made the mistake of putting it back on the shelf. The story’s emotional power reveals itself through Kriya’s vibrant entrance and her meet-cute with Charles on the steps of the wrong office building.
My Best Advice: Stick with Charles, and you’ll discover—as Kriya and I did—something unexpected behind the legalese. In this book, the romance isn’t built on flirtation, but on resilience. And once again, that age-old refrain proves itself: we only begin to truly know someone when we set down our assumptions and simply see.
This is the truest modern romance—frenemies to lovers, built on tension, truth, and the slow, intentional act of discovering love. A story that asks: What if resistance is the first step toward connection?”
One of the most extraordinary things about reading is how it offers instant intimacy: the chance to meet anyone, anywhere, anywhen—and understand them. Stories let us enter lives radically different from our own, and still recognize the shared desires, drives, fears, and hopes that make us human. That’s why representation in storytelling isn’t just a checkbox—it’s a bridge. It invites us into someone else’s lived experience and shows us that emotional truth isn’t bound by identity, but shaped by it—offering space to recognize the parts of ourselves we hadn’t named yet, while celebrating what makes us beautifully unique.
And that’s why Behind Frenemy Lines deserves both applause and scrutiny. Zen Cho sets out to tell a story about workplace power dynamics, emotional constraint, cultural identity, and romantic tension—all filtered through the overlapping worlds of law and love.
Kriya Rajasekar is ambitious, magnetic, and professionally cornered. After an inappropriate advance from her mentor-boss at a conference, she invents a fictional boyfriend to deflect attention—only to have her rival, Charles Goh, mistakenly assigned that role in a well-meaning but misguided intervention. What begins as a defensive charade becomes a slow-burning entanglement, sharpened by proximity and softened by quiet revelation.
Charles isn’t your typical romantic lead. He narrates his chapters like a deposition—clipped, formal, emotionally distant. In early scenes, his POV reads like redacted testimony: precise, rigid, almost like a screenplay for a courtroom drama. Cho’s stylistic choice mirrors his inner restrictions brilliantly, though it comes at a cost. For readers like me—who view dialogue as the heart’s translator—it can feel like a wall. Clever, yes. But emotionally withheld to the point of disconnection.
Kriya, by contrast, commands the page with vitality and clarity. Her narration draws you in like a moth to flame, and it’s through her lens that Charles’s carefully curated persona begins to soften. Their wonderfully friction-fraught relationship chips away at his walls—not in melodrama, but through humor, awkward gestures, and quiet empathy. Honestly, he’s the most Darcy-esque character I’ve read in years: all fumbles, blushes, and lawyerly deflections. And while his initial stiffness frustrated me, the gradual emergence of his emotional depth eventually earned my investment.
This novel tackles heavy themes: sexual harassment, cultural flattening, and the pressure to package identity as palatable. And it does so within a narrative that’s bold, sometimes uneven, and quietly experimental—but ultimately worth wrestling with.
I’m so glad I was gifted this book—if not, I might’ve made the mistake of putting it back on the shelf. The story’s emotional power reveals itself through Kriya’s vibrant entrance and her meet-cute with Charles on the steps of the wrong office building.
My Best Advice: Stick with Charles, and you’ll discover—as Kriya and I did—something unexpected behind the legalese. In this book, the romance isn’t built on flirtation, but on resilience. And once again, that age-old refrain proves itself: we only begin to truly know someone when we set down our assumptions and simply see.