Inkspot Fancy

So, you know those young love stories? Two people admit their feelings for one another and begin a new relationship, but poor communication and insecurity lead to misunderstandings between them? Yeah, this is basically that, in spades.

A shy art student is nursing a longtime crush on a baseball star when out of the blue, the baseball star comes up to him and asks him out. What to do! Especially when his under-emotional expressions sometimes give lie to the surprising volume of feelings he's expressing in his head. So some of the confusion just comes from that through the series - Satoru (the art student) just not being very good at either showing or speaking his feelings. And then you have the baseball player, Keigo, who has his own communication issues, and the both of them are very concerned about the fragility of their growing relationship, so they're constantly seeing rivals where they don't exist.

I'm not much for romance (heck, this book was a gift to me), but I thought this was enjoyable. The characters are cute together, complex enough to drive the plot and dedicated to one another in a way I found refreshing. It was clear that no matter how concerned the boys might be about not being enough for the other, they actually both loved one another very much. Even the one person in this book who actually IS trying to break them up can't really see that, though, so I guess I can't blame the boys for not realizing it. Being in a new relationship is a fragile, nervous time.

If this sort of light romance sounds like your thing, go for it. I don't know if I'll be moving on though since, while I was okay here, I'm worried that too much of these constant self-doubts and "omg he's going to leave me" may wear thin after a while. We'll see. :)