“Love is seeing an imperfect
person perfectly,” I quote from the prologue of She’s Dating a Gangster by
Bianca Bernardino; it’s what the story is about. Athena who isn’t into gangster
or typical bad boy types falls in love with Kenji who drinks, smokes, goes to
bars even on school days, and gets into brawls. But amidst his supposed bad boy
personality, there is a lovable side of him.
Storyline
Athena Dizon sounded like Athena
Abigal Tizon or Bee for Kenji delos Reyes. Someone gave him the wrong number
when he was trying to reach out to his ex. Athena can’t shove away the
persistent texter so she pretended to be Bee and told him to go away. Turned out
they are assigned seatmates in Athena’s new school. She just transferred from
Korea with her brothers and bestfriend Sara, who became friends with Jigs,
Kirby and his twin Grace who were all friends with Kenji. The latter made
Athena pay for what she did by making her his pretend GF in the quest to make
his Bee jealous and eventually win her back from Lucas.
The supposed pretend game ended
up making them real lovers but a twist in fate made them forlorn lovers
instead. Abigail with her cancer came between them twice but not until Kenji
knew of Athena’s HCM. Sadly, he committed suicide after watching her farewell
video a year after she died.
My Thoughts
The book wasn’t too thick so I
decided to read it amongst a pile of other Pinoy novels I’ve purchased from
National Book Store. It’s from Summit Books and was written in English. The
back description was enticing so I added it amongst other pending to be read Filipino
books. I thought the theme was rom-com like Talk Back and You’re Dead (same
gangster subject) but it was actually heartbreaking. Reading about the ups and
downs of the couples love story is definitely a page turner but when you reach
the climax all the way to the ending, it was heart wrenching that I wished I
didn’t read it at all. :( I lacked sleep thinking about it throughout the
night.
Recommendation
If you’re not looking for a tear
jerker, then this book is not for you. But if you’d like a heartwarming story,
one which proves love can be forever even after death, then this is a must have
in your shelf of books.
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