Product Description: Kaysuya always had an immense admiration for Shio, his good friend's older brother. Now, through an interesting twist of fate, Shio and Katsuya have become roommates! Will Katsuya be able to control his feelings now that they are living together?
Okay but... I buy every yaoi novel I can find that is printed in English. I confess that I'm not expecting anything great; just a little smut and some cute drawings. This had nice illustrations (though they were few and far between) but it was really poorly written. I don't know if it was a problem with the translation or what but the author would switch points of view in mid paragraph. That is confusing and extremely annoying. In one sentence we're getting Shio's thoughts and then we're suddenly reading Katsuya's thoughts without any transition.
It reminded me a little of that horrible first edition of "Only the Ring Finger Knows v01" which barely made any sense. But this wasn't nearly as bad.
I would say this is merely okay. The drawings were nice but there were hardly any for the first half of the novel (only 1 in the first 70 pages and then a little overkill for the rest of the novel). The story was sweet and predictable (just the way I like my yaoi). But I am trying not to think too hard about that bit between Shio and Takamasa. I don't want to realize just how old Takamasa was when that "incident" occurred.
A Sweet Read Sweet Admiration starts sweet enough, Katsuya reminisces his childhood and when he first came into contact with the beautiful Shio, his best friend's older brother. He remembers the slender quiet young man that was SHio and his almost feminine beauty. Though Katsuya is athletic looking with muscles he is not the seme in this story, in fact he is very self conscious when it comes to Shio who is unexpectedly harsh in the beginning with Katsuya when they are made to move in together. Shio also has a younger step brother who is obsessed with him, and treats Katsuya like the "third wheel". In Sweet admiration we follow these two unlikely candidates to fall in love with each other as they struggle to overcome their own differences. Although I had waited for a very long time for this novel I wasn't surprised that it wasn't going to be a favorite of mine. The cover kind of swept me up, when I began reading the story I noticed many things off such as Katsuya and the way he acted throughout the novel as well as Shio though beautiful and slender came off as having more of a masculine behavior especially when it came to Katuya's feelings. I won't say it was a perfect read but it did seem to come off as more realistic than many other yaoi novels out there in the market. Take the time to read a couple of pages as I leave you to make the decision, it really wasn't in my tastes especially in the whole uke and seme roles [that's not a spoiler you can see it coming a mile a way] but it was okay nonetheless.
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