The Friend Zone Experiment

From the renowned, award-winning author Zen Cho comes a delightfully funny romance about family, class, and love in modern London.

From the outside, Renee Goh’s life looks perfect. She’s thirty and beautiful, running a glamorous—and successful—fashion company in London, and dating a hot pop star.

Until she’s dumped. Estranged from her family in Singapore, too, happiness soon feels a world away. A chance encounter with her first love, Yap Ket Siong, makes her question what she really wants. Then Renee’s father calls from Singapore and offers her the chance to become the successor of the family business, one of the largest conglomerates in Southeast Asia. Her father’s approval would mean everything—if she can fight off the competition of her unpredictable older brothers.

Just as she’s focusing on her future and a possible move back to Singapore, sparks seriously start to fly with Ket Siong, shaking her resolve to keep him in the friend zone. But he left her heartbroken at university—will either of them dare to share their feelings the second time around? Or will family business mean they can’t bank on each other...

About the Author

Zen Cho was born and raised in Malaysia and now lives in Birmingham. She was a finalist for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer for her short fiction and won the Crawford Award. Her debut novel, Sorcerer to the Crown, won the 2016 British Fantasy Society Award for Best Newcomer. She is also the author of The True Queen, Black Water Sister and Spirits Abroad.

Reviews

"Cho is a marvel. Her deft observations go down like a charm, but their emotional power will leave you deeply moved... The Friend Zone Experiment is a story so intensely real that you’ll wonder later if it happened to someone you knew" —Shelley Parker-Chan, author of She Who Became the Sun

"Renee Goh has joined the ranks of my favourite romance heroines; I was sucked into her story immediately and cheered for her the whole way through. This is a romance that celebrates its tropes while not being afraid to show its teeth, all delivered in Cho's assured and lively authorial voice. I can't wait to see where she takes us next in this genre!" —Freya Marske, Sunday Times bestselling author of A Marvellous Light

"A lovely, tender romance, beautifully threaded through real world concerns that had me engrossed. I savored every delicately written moment" —Charlotte Stein, author of When Grumpy Met Sunshine

"Reminiscent of classic Kdramas with a touch more reality, Cho perfectly balances a friends-to-lovers romance with familial tensions and business-world intrigue. Easily one of my top reads of the year!" —Simone Soltani, author of Cross the Line

"Renee and Ket Siong lose and find each other in an emotionally intense love story set against a dramatic backdrop of corporate greed, class and family. Lovers of Zen Cho’s fabulous fantasy stories will be thrilled by her first contemporary romance" —Lily Chu, author of The Stand In