Manga Review: Pretty Poison by Yutta Narukami

Rating (Out of 5): ~3

Publisher: Aurora (Luv Luv)

Volumes: 1 (One-shot)

Amazon Synopsis:

He's dangerous, beautiful & addictive... She Can't get enough!

Riyako's dreams of a happy marriage are shattered when her "true love" cheats on her. Heartbroken, she finds herself seduced by the beautiful young Shogo, ending in a night of heated, passionate sex. However, what seemed like an accidental meeting turns out to be much more, as Shogo and her ex-lover are somehow connected! In her vulnerable state, Riyako can't help herself from becoming more and more addicted to the seductive, poisonous bad boy Shogo. He knows just the right buttons to push to get what he wants, and what he wants is more hot sex with Riyako. A suspenseful and lust-filled love affair ensues.

Review:

I'm always looking for volumes from out-of-print companies, and that's especially for ones from Aurora and LuvLuv. Mostly because they tend to be smutty josei manga, and I love those. Or, I want to love them. I want to find a really good josei manga, and I would love it even more to have good smut, and I just can't. Usually the story is weak, or the characters are weak, or the art is weak; or maybe even all of them. And it just isn't what I want. And so I am disappointed. And this one wasn't all that much different. Which, honestly, sucks.

So, the first three chapter of this manga are all on the same persons story, Riyako. She's with this guys, who she believes loves her and agrees to move in together with her, while is obviously cheating on her, and he goes out and gets one of his 'friends' to make a move on her and 'console' her when she sees him with another girl. They guy, Shogo, ends up crashing with her for a few nights, even though she acts like she doesn't want his there. And then she gets all upset when she finds out it was all a set up. By the end, though, she's taking care of him again after finding out about his parents and telling off her old boyfriend.

Most of this was a bit annoying. I mean, obviously her old boyfriend was a bit shady, and then Shogo, who she ends up with, isn't very good at consoling her, and instead makes a move on her, pretending to have fallen in love with her as soon as he saw her (which is so obviously a line). He does several things within the story that bothered me, like pushing her into sex and just pushing her in general, which I didn't like. He wasn't particularly nice to her, and so I didn't feel that it made sense for them to believe they were in love so suddenly, when there weren't very many reasons for them to have fallen in love.

Also, I believe he stated, maybe once in the whole thing, that he loved the first guy and was gay, maybe bi? At first I thought he was joking, but he sounded pretty serious. Maybe he was, though, since it was never mentioned again, and didn't seem to be much of a problem? That bothered me a bit, but whatever, I guess?

That story gets a few points for the ending, though, since they decided to give themselves some room to grow, and they end up back together a while after the rest of the story. It wasn't done as well as it could have been, but it was still a good idea. Riyako gets a few points, too, because somewhere within the story, she ties him up because she doesn't trust him, which I haven't seen before and was happy with. That's not a whole lot of points for her, though, since she bought all the lines given to her and wasn't very strong for most of the story.

The last story, Yuji Scores, is about a girl who is in love with her soccer player boyfriend. He asks her to marry him, and she says yes, but later finds out that she isn't quite ready for it. I thought that they weren't quite right for each other, since they wanted very different things in life, and that something would happen with this other guy she knows, but nothing did. Instead, she breaks off the engagement, because she isn't ready for that (which she's not, since he wants a stay-at-home wife who can cook and will follow him around, but she's a bit useless at home and wants to work. Also, she's a bit materialistic, while he's not). In the end, though, they patch things up and she's trying to be more like what he wants.

At the end of the story, she states that someday she's 'going to make an honest man' out of him. I understand that that's supposed to mean they're going to marry someday, but I didn't think it really worked in their situation. Mostly because he's not not honest. He's pretty straight-forward with her, and doesn't cheat on her or anything. I just feel that she could have said something else, and it still could have had the same meaning, but that maybe went better with their situation.

So this one wasn't as good as I'd been hoping it would be. The artwork wasn't bad, but it definitely wasn't amazing. The characters weren't all that strong, nor was the story-line. Some of the smut was good, though, which is nice. On the other hand, though, some of that wasn't even all that good (like when Shogo pushed Riyako). I'm not very impressed, and so am disappointed by that, but mostly because (as I said above) I wanted to like it. I always do, but only few times do I actually like it. I'm still on the look for other Luv Luv and Aurora books, though, because I'm still hoping to find the one that does impress me.

Review: Shadowland (The Immortals, Book 3) by Alyson Noel

~1 of 5 Stars

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Goodreads Synopsis:

Ever and Damen have traveled through countless past lives—and fought off the world’s darkest enemies—so they could be together forever.  But just when their long-awaited destiny is finally within reach, a powerful curse falls upon Damen…one that could destroy everything.  Now a single touch of their hands or a soft brush of their lips could mean sudden death—plunging Damen into the Shadowland.   Desperate to break the curse and save Damen, Ever immerses herself in magick—and gets help from an unexpected source…a surfer named Jude.

Although she and Jude have only just met, he feels startlingly familiar.  Despite her fierce loyalty to Damen, Ever is drawn to Jude, a green-eyed golden boy with magical talents and a mysterious past.  She’s always believed Damen to be her soulmate and one true love—and she still believes it to be true.  But as Damen pulls away to save them, Ever’s connection with Jude grows stronger—and tests her love for Damen like never before…

Review: 

I'm going to talk about what happened in this book before I go on about how I feel about it. I feel a lot, and that could take a while.

In the second book, it ended with Ever being stupid and messing up the cure for Damen, and so now they can't touch skin to skin or he will die. I thought this was a cool idea and I was excited to see where it was going. It reminded me a bit of the tv series Pushing Daisies. I do have a problem with it, though. I thought that she was the recipe earlier in the book? Maybe she saw the recipe for a different thing... Was it the thing to bring her back to the past? I thought it was the cure for Damen, and so she should have had an idea, and known not to put her blood in it. But maybe I'm wrong?

Anyway, in this book, Ever continues to be stupid. She talks with Damen a bit, and she tells him that they can't touch. I see why this would suck. I mean, no kissing or holding or sex. What's the point if there's none of that, right? It would suck, but whatever.

[Spoilers!] The twins end up stuck in the normal world again, which they are mad about, and Ever doesn't want to let them stay at her place. And Ever decides to do this spell thing without really listening to the directions, so she messes things up and ends up making her and Roman connected. And she starts feeling things for a boy named Jude who works at the witch craft-y store, who apparently was also a part of her previous lives. I guess he was sometimes the reason they didn't work, and Damon is taking it that he's being punished, and so he is putting some distance between him and Ever, which she thinks is ridiculous. And near the end, she sees a tattoo on Jude and immediately jumps to conclusions and freaks out.

And the ending! The ending, aside from Ever herself, frustrates me. Earlier in the book, as I've mentioned, Ever messes up a spell and gives her and Ramon a connection, and in the last book, she messed up another potion-thing. At the end of this book, Ramon has Haven almost dying. He gives her the choice of the cure for Damon, so that her and him can touch again, or the cure for Haven, so that she can be an immortal like her. Usually, it would be a good idea for her to help Haven. I mean, girls have to stick together and all that. But Haven sucks. In almost every way. She's bitchy and stupid and whiny and mean and selfish. She's not very nice to Ever, and she's always on the enemies side... It was a stupid decision to save her. And yet Ever decided to do it. And Damon isn't mad at her about it, (which is good, I guess?).

I don't really have much of a feel for Damon. I liked him in the first book, or I remember liking him, but I don't remember why. And in this book, I didn't get too much of a voice from him, either. He wants to follow the rules and tries to keep Ever from straying from them too much, and he wants to do things right and believes in karma and all that. But that's just about all that's left an impression on me, which isn't particularly good.

Now, Ever. I hate Ever. She's stupid and a little whiny and stupid and selfish. She does a lot, and tries to do a lot and be helpful, but she just keeps making stupid mistakes. And not learning from them. She messed up twice with magic-related things, and she chose a terrible friend over someone who will actually stay with her, and she assumes something with thinking about it much. And when her aunt started dating her teacher, all she thought about was how it would affect her. Not considering much on how her aunt felt, like if it would make her happy. She just jumps into things without thinking about it or listening to anyone and never thinks about doing something different next time. I'm wondering if this is how Noel thinks teenagers act, or if this is just how she writes her characters to be. But I haven't read anything else by her, so maybe all of her characters are like this? (I hope not.)

I didn't mind Miles, her boy friend from school. He seemed to be one of the only people that's alright. Well, I do like the twins and Riley. I don't like Roman, but I don't intensely hate him, either. And Jude doesn't even seem like too bad a character. I don't particularly want him or anything, (like how I don't want anyone else in this book,) but I don't mind him. It's a little lame to make a triangle at this point in the series, but whatever.

And the writing wasn't bad. It didn't bother me, and it was a little pretty. It wasn't amazing, but still. Which makes it even worse, really, how much I disliked this book.

I really kind of hated this book, and I don't know if I'm going to read the next one. From what I've heard, it doesn't get much better. It sounds like Damon's curse-thing just drags on, and that's the only thing I want to see get solved. And, maybe, for Ever to smarten up, but I don't have any faith that that'll happen. I might just skip to the last book to see how things get resolved (which is saying a lot, because I don't like reading things out of order,). And I haven't read Riley, Ever's sister's, story, because I haven't heard very good things about it, either.