Noh announces that the best female trainee will be chosen to release a duet song with Jason, but Rachel flubs the evaluation and vomits on an amused Jason. Rachel is drugged by Mina at a party and arrives late to a trainee evaluation the next morning.

Rachel also faces opposition from her mother, Umma, who believes that k-pop training is distracting her too much from the rest of her life and future.Īfter a chance encounter with DB boy-group singer Jason Lee, Rachel becomes attracted to him. Chief among the bullies is Choo Mina, a wealthy trainee who hates Rachel for several etiquette violations she accidentally insulted Mina with years ago. Rachel is bullied by her fellow trainees due to her Korean-American background and because she lives with her family rather than in the trainee dormitories. The atmosphere at DB is highly competitive due to the instructors' high standards and the knowledge that only a small minority of trainees will ever be chosen to debut as a DB performer.

Seventeen-year-old Rachel Kim is a trainee at DB Entertainment, a prominent K-pop company. Jung, a former member of the South Korean girl-group Girls' Generation, was inspired to write the book based on her experiences in the Korean music industry.Ī sequel, Bright, was released on May 10 2022. Shine is a 2020 young adult romance novel by Korean-American singer Jessica Jung, published by Simon & Schuster on September 29 2020. Print (hardback, paperback), e-book, audiobook

Shine jung novel