The premise of Coffee Prince is pretty interesting: A scrappy tomboy, scratching out a living to support her widowed mom and high school-age sister, gets mistaken as a young man and dragged into a friendship with a dashing young coffee heir that evolves into more than either of them bargained for.

From what I can gather from reading other reviews, apparently gender benders like this one are a whole sub-genre of K-dramas that I wasn’t aware of. The other reviews lean overwhelmingly positive, so I guess I’m not a fan of the genre. I just couldn’t get past the suspension of disbelief that is required to get on board, starting with the tomboy Eun Chan played by the diminutive Yoon Eun Hye. All the baggy clothes in the world couldn’t cover up that small waist and curvy hips. There is no way she could pass as a man under an even cursory inspection or a friendly arm around the waist. Wrapping her chest in ace bandages would never be enough.

Next, the dashing, and supposedly worldly, coffee heir Han Gyul (Gong Yoo) is inexplicably inexperienced in the ways of love. I simply didn't buy his attraction to the scruffily dressed, hard-drinking, gluttonous tomboy (although Gong Yoo played it well enough). Sure, Eun Chan was disarming and cute in her own way, but dating-an-heir-with-rockstar-looks cute? And his cousin, Han Sung (Lee Sun Kyun) certainly had no problem identifying Eun Chan's gender. Why was Han Gyul so oblivious?

My mild irritation with these and a few other things percolated below the surface as I watched the story unfold. But while I felt that the story could have been so much better, the leads kept me engaged as it rolled along—so much so, that I’m conflicted over how to rate this one. It is certainly better than average, but ugh! I didn’t buy a big part of the premise, so in my book it’s certainly no 10. I ended up splitting the difference: Not great, but well better than average.