Izumi Miyazono

Alas, this title has slipped into boring soap opera mode, bringing out an old flame and a romantic rival to try to add some drama to the lives of the rather bland workaholic main couple.

I'm going to fight my compulsive completist urge and not bother with the six volumes remaining in this dull series. I'm sure it's just more of the same old tropes until the inevitable happy ending, just as I'm sure I can find a series that does the same thing with more flair and more charismatic characters.

FOR REFERENCE:

Contents:
• Battle 11. The heart emerges from pains of the past. - Ella Wheeler Wilcox
• Battle 12. Love always takes us by surprise. - Michizo Tachihara
• Battle 13. Love is blind, and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit. - William Shakespeare
• Battle 14. We only love women we can make happy. - Marcel Achard
• Battle 15. Love is a divine insanity. - Renaissance quote
• Bonus Story. No Smoking for Nanaryu… (meer)

A volume of the romantic leads being so busy that they either can't meet at all or immediately fall asleep when they do get together.

Weeks into their relationship and they are barely flirting, much less having sex.

I didn't sign up to spend half of the book watching a TV announcer prepping and hosting a music festival his girlfriend watches on TV.

Pretty dull now, but I have another volume on hand from the library to decide whether to bail or forge onward.

FOR REFERENCE:

Contents:
• Battle 6. Don't wait. The time will never be just right. - Napoleon Hill
• Battle 7. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. - Thomas Edison
• Battle 8. Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow. - Benjamin Franklin
• Battle 9. Lovers' quarrels are the renewal of love. - Publius Terentius Afer
• Battle 10. Romance alls for the faraway love of the troubadours; marriage for the love of one's neighbor. - Denis de Rougemont
• Bonus Story. Nanaryu's Rude Language… (meer)

A romance of opposites. She wants to give up her thriving career in real estate to become a housewife. He is a complex fellow, one who's unlikely to take a wife.

They know they are wrong for each other, but there are sparks there . . .

It's actually a bit generic, but I'm just so happy that it is a romance between a couple of twenty-something professionals without an outrageous age gap or a lurking supernatural menace. What a nice change of pace.

FOR REFERENCE:

Contents:
• Battle 1. Where there's marriage without love, there will be love without marriage. - Benjamin Franklin
• Battle 2. A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all. - Thomas Hardy
• Battle 3. It is impossible to love and to be wise. - Sir Francis Bacon
• Battle 4. Only experience or example can rationally determine which way the heart should incline. - Abbé Prévost
• Battle 5. It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not. - André Gide
• Bonus Story. The Melancholy of Nanaryu… (meer)