Yuki manages the basketball team in an effort to get close to its captain, but when he gets a girlfriend she’s left to quietly cry in the club room. Naturally somebody sees this, but, unfortunately for Yuki, it’s her boundary disrespecting junior, Naruse, who has designs on her and will take a lot of things, but ‘no for an answer’ is waaaaay down on the list.
Is this a good book? No, it is not. Should you read this book? If you have problems with people violating boundary issues, certainly not. Is Naruse a walking plague of Egypt with some nice hair? Basically. What kind of person enjoys something like this?
As it turns out, to my own shock, it’s me. And I should not - there is everything I hate in a male lead here from the get-go, with Naruse going in for a completely undesired boob grab and his serious issues with ‘kiss first, ask later’. Just thinking about it narrows my eyes in rage.
The closest book I could think of to this was the disastrous Abe-kun’s Got Me Now!, which featured a monstrous musclehead forcing himself on his chosen crush and whose title I just realize actually reads like a plaintive cry for help. But this story somehow works where that one didn’t and there has to be a reason why…
Part of the reason is the characters, who are at least nuanced even if that nuance tends to be ‘sometimes okay, sometimes awful’. Yuki does so much work for the team, even if she joined for wholly selfish reasons, that she’s super admirable (also, being raised amongst a pair of twins and a set of triplets is as good an excuse for being able to hide your emotions as I’ve ever seen).
Then again, she’s also a bit of a nitwit who is sometimes her own worst enemy and, as worthless as Naruse is, they both occasionally grate in a way that made me think they deserve one another. Naruse’s unwarranted behaviour aside, she spends half this book as her own worst enemy.
Naruse is terrible, basically, but he does get better as the book goes, though make no mistake that that’s a very relative term. Still, he has his moments, like the time he really pushes the team to appreciate all the work Yuki puts in. He’s not good at showing it, but he definitely has an interest in Yuki beyond picking on her for his own amusement.
I like his petulant jealousy as well - a lot of stories would put this guy’s behaviour on a pedestal and just leave him as “the man”, but it’s not like he isn’t called out for being a childish little butt (even as he’s the man).
Look, the Christmas party saves this for me. That was the point where I realized this was growing on me far too much as it really lands well and Yuki being honest with herself for a change in the face of Naruse’s admitted trickery (she’s being so dishonest with herself the whole time though) is very charged, in a good way. This part sizzles by the ending.
This is no book for everybody. It’s full of annoying characters, all sorts of problematic content, and two people who I cannot imagine staying in a relationship for any amount of time (they do seem like the type for very messy make-up sex, I have to say).
I’m just saying - some days I want steak, some days I want pizza, and some days I want a pail full of the sketchiest food I can think of topped with neon cheese and full of ingredients that are purely man-made. This book is probably lower than that, but I found the good in it, much like the story’s resident dumbass.
2.5 stars - if you want to see pure abuse of my rounding system, it would be here with this book that I cannot in good conscience recommend, but will read more of without blinking twice and will quietly round up while shaking my head at myself.
(See also: basically the entire run of Citrus and the first volume of Breasts Are My Favourite Thing in the World.)