BL Library - Marriage / Married Life Archives

Manhwa Review | Love is an Illusion! by Fargo

Title: Love is an Illusion!

Author(s): Fargo

Artist(s): Fargo

Hye-sung is an alpha. Er, or at least he thinks he is an alpha. However, that belief quickly goes down the drain while Hye-sung is working at a party and runs into the dominant alpha and musician, Dojin. After being exposed to Dojin’s pheromones, Hye-sung goes into heat. Dojin tries to take care of Hye-sung and save him from himself as the newly awakened omega tries to throw himself on a few alphas. Dojin whisks Hye-sung away to a hotel where Hye-sung rants and raves that there is no way he could be an omega. Finally, Dojin, flustered by Hye-sung’s pheromones and frustrated by Hye-sung’s delusional beliefs, proves to Hye-sung that he is indeed an omega… physically.

After the dirty deed, Dojin realizes that he actually enjoyed it even though he supposedly hates omegas because of the notion that omegas and alphas have to be together. Even more distressing is that Dojin follows up their encounter by writing a song that his peers say is his best work yet. Believing it is just a coincidence, he runs into Hye-sung again, and they have another steamy encounter that not only results in another great song but something neither of them expects: a baby.

Hye-sung wants to get rid of the baby while Dojin intends to keep it, but more importantly, he now desperately wants to hang on to Hye-sung. They make a deal together where Dojin will pay Hye-sung to carry the baby to term, and Dojin will assume full parental responsibilities. Hye-sung will finally be financially comfortable, and he won’t have to be a mother. Still, Dojin plans on doing anything he can to talk Hye-sung into raising their baby together. The problem is he only has the span of Hye-sung’s pregnancy to do it.

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Manga Review | Kiss Him, Not Me by Junko

Title: Kiss Him, Not Me

Author(s): Junko

Artist(s): Junko

Kae Serinuma is a BL fanatic (can relate). She spends all day and all night consuming all manner of BL content, and when she isn’t enjoying BL, she thinks about it, buys it, fantasizes about it, and even spends her time shipping the boys around her together. As a result, she isn’t the most popular girl around. She’s also a bit chubby, which doesn’t earn her any points with the pretty boys in school, but that doesn’t matter. She isn’t interested in boys unless they want to be with boys themselves!

However, one fateful day, Serinuma’s world is rocked when her favorite character, Shion, from her favorite anime, Mirage Saga, is unexpectedly killed. Unable to handle the loss, Serinuma holes herself up in her room for a week. She doesn’t go to school, she doesn’t eat, she doesn’t sleep, and even her mother and brother don’t see her for the entire week. Finally, her brother breaks her out of her stupor, but what emerges is not the lovable, chubby Serinuma. No, what comes out is a gorgeous lady that even Serinuma herself fails to recognize.

When she returns to school, everyone except history club president Asuma Mutsumi fails to recognize her, and once people realize who she is, they don’t believe it! But there is no denying that Kae Serinuma is this gorgeous creature. As a result, she draws the attention of some of the hottest boys in her school, including history club president and third-year Asuma Mutsumi, classmate and soccer club member Yusuke Igarashi, bad boy Shion-lookalike Nozomu Nanashima, and first-year student Hayato Shinomiya. They are immediately attracted to her new look and make it clear that they all plan on winning her heart. Things get even more complicated, though, when she also draws the attention of Shima Nishina, an androgynous girl who is also a BL fanatic and as equally drawn to Serinuma as all the boys.

While Serinuma enjoys her time with all her new friends, the pressure of their love causes plenty of trouble for all involved. What is worse is that she would rather the boys fall in love with each other rather than her! She promises to consider all of them as possible love interests and promises to give them all an answer in time, but how could she possibly choose? Why can’t they just love each other? Can a BL-fanatic actually fall in love with a boy (or girl)?

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Manhwa Review | A Tender Heart: The Story of How I Became a Duke’s Maid by Aloha

Title: A Tender Heart: The Story of How I Became a Duke's Maid

Author(s): Aloha

Artist(s): Aloha

Liandro is a young boy in a novel, fated to live his life with a painful curse that has destined him to a life of misery, loneliness, and pain. However, the novel’s entire plot is turned upside down when an avid reader, Liandro-stan, ends up waking up as a character in the story. Unfortunately, though, her role is relatively insignificant as one of the many maids caring for Liandro’s household. This particular maid, Evelina, knows something everyone else in her world doesn’t: she knows how the novel plays out and is determined to fight against fate.

Easier said than done, though, as she must break through the cold exterior young Liandro has been forced to put up with as his parents abandoned him, the maids in the house fear him, and he is in unending pain from a curse no one understands. Evelina is up for the challenge, though. Even if she can’t save Liandro from his fate, she is determined to give him all the love he has missed out on and make his life as happy as possible. However, as the years go by and Liandro grows closer to Evelina, what would make him happier than anything is to keep her by his side. Is such a thing possible for a lowly maid when Liandro could be destined for bigger and better things?

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Manhwa Review | The Crown’s Shadow by Haewi

Title: The Crown's Shadow

Author(s): Haewi

Artist(s): Chanok

A random boy from Korea finds himself in another world. While traversing this foreign land, he comes face-to-face with someone who looks and sounds identical to him, like his otherworldly doppelganger. It turns out that this person is Daniel, prince of Rowen. Rowen makes the other-worlder an offer: I’ll take care of you if you become my shadow.

Having nowhere else to go, the boy accepts and is given the name Rael. Rael and Daniel trade places constantly, playing the prince’s role and sharing the burden all of that entails. This goes on for years, with no one catching on, including Daniel’s closest family. Things start to go awry, though, when the kingdom’s emperor comes for a visit.

The emperor is immediately entranced by Rael, who is playing Daniel, and becomes obsessed with him. When Rael and Daniel switch back, the emperor notices immediately but only becomes more intrigued. Finally, on the day the emperor is set to leave Rowen, he goes to Daniel’s father and asks him for a single night with his son, and in exchange, he will give him trade routes and mines. It is an offer the kingdom of Rowen cannot refuse. Daniel, of course, does not want to do this, so Rael, thankful for all that Daniel has done for him, offers to go in his stead.

Rael goes and ends up spending three nights with the emperor before they part ways, and even Rael has to admit that he fell for the emperor, but he admits they may never meet again and moves on. However, he is thrust back into the emperor’s lap when Rowen is suddenly overcome by a noble uprising, and Daniel is murdered. Forced to take the role of Daniel permanently, Rael rushes to the only person he thinks can help him: emperor Lionhart.

Unfortunately, Rael doesn’t know that while the emperor is happy to open his doors to Rael, he won’t be so keen just to let him leave again.

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Manhwa Review | If You Give Me Flowers, I’ll Give You Myself by JO YuJin

Title: If You Give Me Flowers, I'll Give You Myself

Author(s): JO YuJin

Artist(s): Homil

Haewon has been diagnosed with a brain tumor, and with a prognosis of only six months, the possibilities for her future are severely limited. While she is working at a museum in Mongolia, a job she truly loves, her dream is out in the field. She longs to find a flower that no one has discovered and name it herself so she will always be remembered even after she has passed. As a final push to achieve her dream before she dies, she quits her job and sets out for the rural parts of Mongolia, donating all her funds after she purchases a Jeep to get across the rough terrain.

However, not long after leaving, she receives a letter from the hospital where she was first diagnosed. Her former coworker, Dr. Lee, intercepts the letter and discovers that she was misdiagnosed. He has no clue where she has gone, though. Even so, spurred by his love for her, he takes off after her, letter in hand.

Meanwhile, Haewon ends up with her Jeep and all her belongings stolen. Thankfully, she is rescued by the mysterious Eunseong, who has settled out in the deep fields of Mongolia for reasons unknown. Since she cannot continue on her quest without his help and feels sorry for her predicament, Eunseong hesitantly agrees to allow her to stay under the agreement that if she does locate the undiscovered flower, she will let him name it. While he isn’t interested in this prize, it isn’t long before he quickly takes an interest in her, and that interest soon blooms into love.

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Manhwa Review | Bloody Sweet by Lee Narae

Title: Bloody Sweet

Author(s): Lee Narae

Artist(s): Lee Narae

Shin Naerim’s life isn’t going so great. She’s being bullied at school because her mother is a moodang (Korean shaman), and her only solace is online, where she writes web novels and keeps up with a blog. Though she is bright and cheery online, she cannot even speak in real life because it would only entice the bullies further. So instead, she spends her days silently taking every comment and nickname (“wig,” being the main one, short for “witch girl”), waiting for her high school life to finally be over so she can move on with her life.

Unfortunately, there is still more high school life to contend with, and next on the docket for Naerim is an overnight school field trip. As if it isn’t enough for her to deal with the name-calling and abuse during the school day, now she has to do it overnight. Even more unfortunate is that there is an abandoned church nearby where they are staying. It is the perfect backdrop for more bullying of the “witch girl.”

However, these school girls don’t know that just because a place is abandoned doesn’t mean it is empty. While forcing Naerim through the abandoned church, they encounter a closed wardrobe with talismans on the outside of it. They make Naerim open it to reveal a man hidden inside – presumably a dead man as he falls out of the wardrobe on top of Naerim without a word. Of course, everyone is shocked and runs off, leaving Naerim alone in the church with the dead body. As luck would have it, though, it isn’t a dead body but a vampire, and he finds Naerim delicious.

After taking a few licks of Naerim’s wounds, she kicks him off of her and takes off back to where the class is staying, but even as she escapes the church, she finds that a red thread now trails out from her wound, seemingly to nowhere and she is the only one who can see it. However, it’s not clear what the thread is until the man appears on the balcony of the place Naerim is staying. She realizes that the man, named Vlad Fetechou, is a vampire and because he drank Naerim’s blood, a witch, he has now become her servant with a collar and red string that ties them together. If Fetechou drinks enough of Naerim’s blood, he will eventually become human, and their pact as servant and master will be broken, but will Naerim survive long enough to help Fetechou? Does she even want him to become human in the first place?

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Manhwa Review | This Villainess Wants a Divorce! by AhBin

Title: This Villainess Wants a Divorce!

Author(s): AhBin

Artist(s): AhBin

This is a good old reincarnation story. A young Korean woman is reincarnated into a novel, and the person she has taken over happens to be the villainess of the story, Carnelia Easter. She just so happens to reincarnate right after her marriage to the crown prince, Caesar. If the original novel were to play out as it should, she would marry the male lead Caesar under the direction of the empress in an attempt to weaken Caesar’s claim to the throne in favor of her own son. Caesar would eventually go off to war, return a hero, proving that he is worthy of the throne, and fall in love with the female lead Gracie Lancaster, who Carnelia tries to get rid of only to cause her own execution, resulting in Caesar being free to marry Gracie and to take over as emperor.

Not willing to set herself up to die this time around, she makes a concerted effort to help Caesar thwart his stepmother’s plans as well as grow closer to Caesar. She does her best to ensure Caesar still achieves all of his goals while she cheers him on from the side in hopes he will grant her an amicable divorce so she can live out the remainder of her days in peace. Unfortunately, not everything goes to plan as Gracie and Caesar don’t seem interested in each other, and Carnelia herself begins to fall in love with the prince instead. As a result, the story starts to change. Will Carnelia be able to keep herself alive in this unpredictable story, or is she destined to die no matter what?

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Manga Review | Fruits Basket by Natsuki Takaya

Title: Fruits Basket

Author(s): Natsuki Takaya

Artist(s): Natsuki Takaya

This story revolves around our lovable, orphaned main character, Tohru Honda. Tohru’s life is filled with hardship. Her father passed when she was a young girl, her mother died not long before the start of our story, she is forced to live in a tent in the woods due to her grandfather’s home renovations and an unkind family living with him, and she works a cleaning job to pay her own way in the world while also attending school.

What Tohru doesn’t know is that she has mistakenly started camping inside the land of the Sohma clan, a family of mysterious, attractive men and women who mostly keep to themselves. One of the main members is Yuki Sohma, who goes to school and is in the same class as Tohru, though they do not interact as Yuki is very distant at school. Tohru ends up accidentally stumbling across the house where Yuki is staying, thus encountering the second Sohma Shigure, an older and unreliable author who cares for Yuki as a guardian.

When Yuki and Shigure question how she found their house, they discover she is living in a tent. For her safety, they ask her to stay with them, at least until her grandfather’s home renovations are complete. While Tohru is unwilling at first, as she fears being a burden on people, a landslide ends up crushing her tent, which forces her to accept the Sohma’s offer.

During her first day with the Sohmas, she ends up meeting Kyo, another Sohma member who hates Yuki with a passion. He challenges Yuki to fight, which, of course, shocks Tohru, but Yuki and Shigure are not surprised in the least. While trying to stop him, Tohru ends up accidentally embracing him, and when she does, Kyo turns into a cat. It is then revealed that Kyo (the cat), Yuki (the rat), and Shigure (the dog) are all part of the Sohma curse, which causes 13 members of the family to turn into the 13 animals of the Chinese zodiac whenever a member of the opposite sex embraces them.

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