a yuri romance for the modern career woman >> is about a girl working a boring-ass desk job who feels like she has no control over her life
no star rating on this one bcs i don't think i'm the intended audience? number one, this was my first manga and apparently i can't read manga for shit bcs it took me like a third of this thing to figure out how to read right to left lmao (thanks for the gift tho, anagord!! every day is a school day and i *did* acquire a new skill after finishing this <3).
number two, in the author's note panel(??) the author jokingly remarked that these MCs seem kinda like teens and like,,,,yeah. not that i dislike YA romance per se, it's just that i didn't go into it with the correct expectations (ahem, "for the modern career woman"), so the protagonist's immaturity kinda threw me off. i mean, maybe immaturity is not the right word - the heroine struggles with compulsory heterosexuality and god knows it's not just teens who internalize that shit (i for one felt uncomfortably seen by the whole "finding a man(tm) makes u normal in the eyes of the world/being femme is armour that keeps u safe from judgement" twin brain-weasels). but her whole journey of "so i *don't* have to spend all my time pleasing others and performing normative unthreatening femininity??", while an important message, was conveyed very...unsubtly? this is actually reminding me of a convo we had in the Romance Salon the other day about what makes YA lit distinct and a few people said sth along the lines of "big emotions, expressed in clear language". and while that is great, i am a grown-ass woman who does not need to be reading a fictional girlie saying "You're defective. You can't fall in love. There's something wrong with you. You'll never be normal." to herself, like girl follow the Ace Dad Advice insta or some shit, Marie Condo that nonsense out of your brain!! but then again i can only say this bcs i am a grown-ass woman and not a girlie who is currently in the trenches.
either way i did get to read the word senpai printed on paper with my own two eyes, so that's something!!