Cherry owns a club that caters to wealthy lesbians. They come for a night of fun. Cherry watches over her club and clientele with an experienced eye so there are no complaints. She arranges partners and parties for them.

I liked this book. It introduces the characters who work for and with Cherry. It also sets up the series. The rendezvous are hot! I liked the graphicness of what happens in the club. This time Cherry has arranged for a woman's birthday surprise by her friends as well as an 18th birthday party for the stepdaughter of a long-time and important client. Cherry has hired a new dancer and has a request to join the club. The story is good bedtime reading and I look forward to the rest of the series.

This was an amazing book that in the year 2022 hit a little two close to home.  The people of Lille have been subject to to whims of a power-hungry tyrant for over two centuries, with women and girls bearing the brunt of his madness.  Cinderella is dead, and it turns out the story everyone has been told about her is a lie.

This was a beautiful retelling.  So original and thought provoking (considering today's current atmosphere.)  I was completely caught up in the tale.  The characters, even with a few annoying habits, were so likeable.  I was right there in it, fighting with them.  It was well thought out and wonderfully written.   I read along with the ebook, while listening to the audiobook and as usual, Bahni Turpin knocked it out of the park!  She captured the emition of the characters and did amazing distinguishing them with different voices.  This was a 10-out-of-10 would/will read again.

Machi is tired of her parents' constant efforts to match her up with a successful man and half jokingly says she should marry someone they'd hate just to spite them. Her friend Hana surprises her when she suggests that the two of them get married. The news so shocks Machi's parents that they do indeed back off, at least temporarily. The special partnership certificate requires that they both live in Shibuya, so Hana moves in with Machi, which also helps them maintain the marriage charade.

Machi can't help but wonder if Hana is actually serious about all of this, though. Back in high school, Hana confessed her love for her, and Machi turned her down. They've continued to be friends, but what if Hana hopes their fake marriage will become a real one? As Machi starts to ponder her and Hana's relationship, she also takes a long, hard look at her life.

This was okay. I wanted something light and non-explicit, and that's what I got. I kind of wished it had a bit more substance to it, though. Machi seemed to just work, eat, and sleep, which fit her characterization, but I would have thought Hana would have had a more visible social life beyond the one meet-up with her ex.

Hana was the energetic and positive one, while Machi spent a large chunk of the volume looking tired and depressed. I was glad when Machi started evaluating her life and deliberately became a more active participant in it. I cheered her on when she became more assertive at work, and the part where she told her mother off for the first time was great. She was standing up for Hana, yes, but also for herself.

I had some issues with the romance aspect, mostly due to the fact that Hana and Machi's expectations for what their marriage would be like once it went from being fake to real didn't seem to match up (although the special partnership certificate was real, so honestly they were married for real from the start, but whatever). Machi seemed perfectly fine with the way things were - living together, spending time together, making meals for each other, and just generally supporting each other, no sex required. 

There's no problem with that, and I actually would have been on board with it, if it hadn't been so obvious that Hana expected their relationship to eventually include sex. She made it clear that she was willing to wait and take things slow, but it never seemed to enter her mind that it might never happen, or that it might happen but that Machi might not be as into it as she was. There were no moments when Machi realized she found Hana sexually attractive, and all physical affection, except for a few head pats and a hug, were initiated by Hana. But they did eventually kiss and Machi enjoyed it, so maybe I was concerned for no reason.

Overall, this was nice, but it could have used a second volume. Or a full volume devoted to this story and these characters. It's common for one-shots to include one or more additional stories, and this one was no exception. The last quarter or so was devoted to an unrelated short called "Anaerobic Love."

If you were flipping through the volume, you'd likely think it was a flashback to Machi and Hana's high school days, because the character designs are so similar, but the story actually stars Oshimi and Mutsumi. Mutsumi is the school's track star, while Oshimi used to be in track but hurt herself and now dedicates herself to studying. Mutsumi seems cold towards Oshimi, and yet she frequently has Oshimi give her massages after practice. Oshimi, for her part, eventually realizes that her interest in Mutsumi may actually be love.

I liked this story a good deal less than the main one, and the times when Oshimi deliberately hurt Mutsumi while massaging her made me uncomfortable. I'd really have preferred it if this story had been scrapped and the main one fleshed out a bit more.

Extras:

A color illustration, a 2-page author afterword in manga form, and four pages worth of extra scenes relating to the main story.

Rating Note:

I debated between 3 and 3.5 stars. It wasn't the most memorable thing ever, and I doubt I'll ever want to reread it, but I did really enjoy Machi's personal growth, so I went with 3.5.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

Content warning for this manga: discussions of cutting, binging, and anorexia, and, if it wasn't obvious from the cover, there's on-page nudity and sex.

This volume begins with the author's first sexual experience, at age 28, in a love hotel with a woman from a lesbian escort agency. Only a few pages in, Nagata interrupts this scene to explain how she got to that point. After high school, nothing seemed to go the way she expected. She dropped out of university after six months, became depressed, developed an eating disorder, and couldn't seem to hold down a part-time job, much less the salaried position that her family expected her to have by that point. She gradually comes to the realization that a lot of her internal pain was the result of wanting love, comfort, and unconditional acceptance from parents (particularly her mother) who seemed unable to really understand her. And yes, the story does eventually get back to the scene in the love hotel, and it is awkward.

I was not expecting to enjoy this as much as I did. I figured it'd be depressing and emotionally exhausting. Nagata was so fragile at times that it was painful to read, but she somehow managed to keep the tone relatively light. It also helped that this was clearly a look back at worse times in her life - Present-Day Nagata had done a lot of thinking, had figured out better paths to take, and was actually eating regular meals and feeling more like her own definition of "adult." She wasn't "cured," necessarily, but she was doing better.

I liked Nagata's frank and unflinching look at self-harm, eating disorders, her mental health issues as a whole and the toll they'd taken on her body (scars, a bald spot from hair pulling, etc.), the inadequacy of her own sex education (she realized after the incident at the love hotel that most of her expectations came from m/m erotic doujinshi, of all things), and more. I was a little surprised that she was willing to put so much of herself out there, but she even addressed this. Her explanations made sense, I guess, but still. I can just imagine the awkwardness after her parents read this volume (if they read it?).

The one part of the volume that threw me a bit was Nagata's somewhat Freudian exploration of her desire to be touched and held by women, which she decided was rooted in her constant clinging to her mother. She never quite came out and said it, but she seemed to see her lesbianism as being connected to all of this, as though it was a childish fixation she'd never grown out of.

Overall, I thought this was really good, and I plan to read Nagata's My Solo Exchange Diary as well.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)