Satomi Tsuya

A manga based on a Harlequin Historical Christmas novella. It is part of a series, so the truncated text made the plot a bit hard to follow at times, and a couple of twists came out of nowhere to me. But the art was good and the MCs were enjoyable. Hero and heroine come together to thwart a blackmail attempt on a bridegroom to be. Hero is friend of groom, heroine is friend of bride. The heroine thinks she's going to become engaged to a long-standing friend, so she fights her attraction to the hero. The hero is less boyish than some I've read, which made him more believable. The historical context is nicely drawn and the romance developed through both the art and the text effectively. Either this was a particularly successful manga adaptation or I'm getting better at decoding them.… (meer)