Grade: C

Jan has taught me to check the original copyright date when reading these. It was released in Japan as a manga in 2003, but the original novel A Daring Deception came out in 2000. It still felt a little “Holy, 80’s Secretary in Love with Her Boss Who Thinks She’s a Flirt, OH NOES, Batman!” however. This is my first manga ever and even though it’s kind of terrible —printed in flirty pink ink! — I do believe I’m going to keep reading them. They’re short, there’s pictures —yay!—and I was amused by the overly expositional dialogue. It’s hilarious! Here’s a sample: “I can’t fall in love with a girl who’s a tramp— so there can be nothing more between us”.

Plot: Shy Rachel is a young Londoner secretary who is in luuuuurve with Nathan, the director of the bank owned by her grandmother. Nathan is generally cold to Rachel because he believes she’s a “flirt” and a “tramp”. Two years ago, in a beach in the South of France, Nathan watched as Rachel stole her best friend’s man and broke her best friend’s heart. For Nathan, this is soooo totally evil. But Nathan is WRONG! Rachel only did it because the best friend’s boyfriend was a gold-digger and she was only trying to break them up for the best friend’s own good. *eye roll* Now Rachel is in love with Nathan and Nathan won’t give her the time of day. That is, until, a no-good gambler manages to get his hands on Rachel’s trampy grandmother’s love letters and blackmails her. Now it’s up to Rachel —who has to pretend to be Nathan’s hot blond girlfriend— and Nathan to fly to Lake Tahoe to the gambler’s house, pull a Casino Royale, grab the letters, and hightail it back to London. Only Nathan can’t seem to stop kissing Rachel and Rachel is so totally in love with him that it breaks her heart each time Nathan says something mean to her. Especially since Nathan will never date a tramp like her!

[Please click on the images for a larger version]

The Heroine: Rachel is your typical whingey, fluttery-hands type who gets all verr klempt when the hero gives a cold look or calls her a tramp. Ok, honestly, that’s like… sexual harassment, isn’t it? Her grandmother owns the bank! Get that bitch-ass fired, for real. And yet she takes to it pretty well when she has to pretend to be Nathan’s slutty girlfriend and flirts with the bad guy like you wouldn’t believe. Naturally, she gets a makeover and all of a sudden, Nathan can’t stop making out with her even though he still won’t stop calling her a tramp. Man, that guy is such a prince. Anyway, Rachel becomes determined to show Nathan that she’ll be the flirt he’s always thought she was and will be sorry he ever treated her so shabbily! Go Rachel. Only she doesn’t own it. She’ll be rubbin’ up on the bad guy and later on, torture herself about it when Nathan’s all, “I knew it! You ARE a tramp!” I’m surprised this girl’s head didn’t blow up with all the mixed messages Nathan was giving her. Poor thing. She’s all, “I love you, Nathan” and he’s all, “I love you too, but I can’t be with you… ’cause you’re a tramp.”

The Hero: We don’t really get anything from Nathan. All of the thought-bubbles are from Rachel’s point of view. Basically, he’s just a dude who says some really cold things and is an all-around sanctimonious, self-righteous prick. He kisses her, he shoves her away… he won’t listen to her! For some reason, he’s determined to believe the worst of Rachel, but since we never get it from his POV, he just seems… like a crazy person. He’s got a Madonna/Whore thing with her. When she’s dressed in her plain clothes, he doesn’t have a hard time ignoring her; when she’s dressed like a “tramp”, he can’t get his hands off of her. And when Rachel finally tells him the TRUTH, he’s all, “wait… you were trying to make a fool out of me!” YEAH, ‘CAUSE IT’S ALL ABOUT YOU, NATHAN!

The Dialogue: “He must be supporting his gambling addiction with unethical business practices!”

The Art:Like I said, this is my first manga, so I don’t really know how to judge them. Um… the drawing is good, I guess? Rachel looks like your typical manga heroine with her long, flowing blondie-blond hair and giant blue eyes. Nathan… looks a little bit like Robert Smith from The Cure. I mean, he’s supposed to be some London executive, yet his hair is always in his face and boy, check out how much product he uses on that thing. Dude looks like some emo brood boy who’s all depressed ’cause he couldn’t get his hands on the latest Fall-Out Boy CD or he’s totally bummed that Avril is still married to that jerkweed, Derek Whibley. He’s still kind of cute, though. A- for the artwork, for sure.

Final Word: The artwork is good — but the flirty pink ink definitely killed my retinas. For real, what’s wrong with plain ole black ink? It’s definitely an improvement over the nasty purple ink, though. The Harlequin Violets just looked like a big giant bruise. The story is about your typical bimbo masochist with fluttery hands and no constitution and the cold-ass jerkweed she falls in love with. Anyway, the cheese factor is definitely high and the dialogue was hilarious and it took me… like, forty-five minutes to read the whole thing, so I enjoyed myself. In fact, after reading this, I went to the Harlequin site to see if they have any more, but… dude, it’s practically the end of April and their January stuff is still up. What’s going on? Did they yank the line again? UGH! Come on, Harlequin! Don’t leave me hanging! Keep ‘em coming!

Love, Peace, and Snarkage

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 at 8:00 am and is filed under Books, Grade: C, Romance: Contempo, Romance: Category. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.