Reading: THE TRANSCENDENT ONE-SIDED LOVE OF YOSHIDA THE CATCH VOL. 1 - Shizuki Fujisawa

1st Line: " 'Oh ... it's Yoshida-san, from the planning department!' "

Review: Yoshida is a young, very handsome business executive by day, very intelligent and successful in his job, his all-business aloofness adding to his mystique that sees so many women in his office crushing on him. Cool, sophisticated, Yoshida has his you-know-what together ... untiil after work, when he heads over to a tiny office where a crew of artists struggle with weekly deadlines to put out the latest issue of their manga, under the direction of the manga's creator and writer, the beautiful and super-focused workaholic Sena Shimakaze. Here, Yoshida - know as Chief - tries to hold the crew and weekly publication together even as he internally struggles with his own love for Sena; they've known each other since school, and he's been completely in love with her nearly all that time. Here, Yoshida's cool, together side frazzles and frays as he works hard to help Sena's manga - a publishing business he helped her to start - a success, while still unable to reveal his true feelings for her after all this time. Even the small office staff is Team Chief, recognizing his devotion and love for their boss and trying to hep bring them together but the problem is that Sensei (Sena) is so wrapped up in her work and business (plus, honestly, she's a scatterbrain), in all these years she is still not only a grown woman clueless to things like dating and finding a partner - but in all this time, she's never even once realized how incredibly ga-ga Yoshida is for her, which makes his orderly, together life anything but. Volume 1 sets up the situation and characters nicely, both humor and emotions sometimes over-the-top as you can expect with manga, and at times Sena is so darn dense as to what is going on around her - even when her entire staff is all but shoving the hapless, helpless Yoshida in her face - that you could all but smack her, but the humor is charming here, and poor Yoshida's struggle to make the love of his life see the light - and him - make for the pulling of a few heartstrings until Volume 2 comes along.  3.5/5 stars

NOTE: I received a free ARC of this title from NetGalley and the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.