The Oks Are Not OK

The Oks Are Not OK
By Grace K. Shim
Kokila, 2026. 352 pages. Young Adult Fiction.

When seventeen-year-old influencer Elena Ok's family loses its fast-fashion fortune and flees Los Angeles for rural California, she is forced to confront her family's dynamics, and when she begins helping local vendors at the Blaire Fair, she starts to rethink her definition of success.

While this feels like the setup for a romantic comedy on the Hallmark Channel, The Oks Are Not OK is not what I was expecting. The tiny fictional California town of Blaire (located about 20 miles outside of Bakersfield), is a far cry from the Christmas tree farms and leaf-strewn New England hamlets you’ll usually find in a Hallmark film—California’s Central Valley is a massive agricultural region that goes largely ignored by the rest of the world. It’s sweltering hot for much of the year, and most tourists only see it through their car windows as they drive through on their way to someplace more exciting. (Source: I was born and raised in the Valley, and I was thrilled to see it get a little attention.) Blaire takes it even further, as the town lies within a National Radio Quiet Zone where all high-frequency electronic transmissions are forbidden—there’s not even cell service! In another story, exile to this "forgotten town" would set the stage for Elena to meet a sweet and probably flannel-clad young man who would teach her some important life lessons, and she would fall in love with him after a series of comical hijinks and misunderstandings.

But that’s where The Oks Are Not OK takes a different path. It’s not a rom-com at all, it’s a coming-of-age story, for both Elena and her family. Elena’s journey of self-discovery leads to her brother Gavin’s attempts to break free of the “heir to the empire” image placed on him from birth to forge his own career path, and to her parents’ realization that their intense focus on creating a prosperous new life for themselves has had unintended effects upon their entire family. The good-hearted citizens of Blaire don’t get as much attention as they deserve, but it’s really for the best that focus stays on the Ok family. It’s a surprisingly heartwarming story of family members learning to finally see one another, and of a heroine who learns to love and value herself for more than just her social media following.

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-LAH