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



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



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 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!



This is a good old 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



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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