*~~*ARC kindly provided to me for an honest review *~~*

- Review to come

Review originally posted on my blog with added content on Mikku-chan / A world full of words

2.75 stars

I liked much of this quiet, slow moving romance. I enjoyed all the details about cooking, and how geeky it was. I liked Sato a lot, how into his special interest he was, how he researched stuff to try to figure it out, how cute he was in his crush. He read as autistic to me, in a sort of understated way, and it was nice to read his POV, as an autistic reader. I liked the way the story illuminated the reality of living in poverty, what it's like to have insecure housing, be food insecure, and do survival sex, and how much that shapes daily life. It felt real, the way that was woven into the story.

I liked that Sato doesn't come out in the course of the story; so often that's assumed to be a necessary part of m/m romance. It suited him to be closeted then, and I appreciated that his being closeted wasn't a source of conflict. I also appreciated that Aoi's sexual history wasn't a source of conflict either. It wasn't a conflict driven story, though there were obstacles, they didn't work in the story like conflict, exactly. I liked that there were a series of misses with them, missed opportunities, misinterpretations of each other, moments when things seem to be going their way and then something throws them off, but they keep coming together anyway.

The ending really didn't work for me, for a few reasons. It seemed to come out of nowhere. There was a new difficult element in Aoi's relationship with his family that got very little attention or story time. The conversation Aoi and Sato have about money felt handwavy and like it ignored complexities. But mostly, it just felt like it ended kind of out of nowhere, with a bunch of things hanging in the air. Because the ending didn't feel very satisfying, that lowered my sense of satisfaction in the story as a whole, unfortunately.

Trigger Warnings: References to being kicked out by family as a teen for being queer. Descriptions of homelessness, survival sex work, housing insecurity, food insecurity.

This book legit had everything I like in a romance book: slow burn, nerdy things and characters who seemed to be endearing (and very little sex, amen). A plus, obviously, was also the fact that it is set in Japan and I love reading romance books (or just books in general) set outside of the U.S.

But the connection just didn’t happen.

I’m still trying to figure out why, so maybe writing this review will help. Would it be okay to love you? has an interesting premise and good writing, but I could never connect with the characters. With the idea of them, yes – it’s impossible not to sympathize with Aoi’s money struggle or with his complicated non-relationship with his parents, or understand Sato’s desire for a relationship. On the surface, everything is perfect – but book never quite manages to make both characters seem real.

To make matters worse, the relationship between Aoi and Sato just isn’t interesting. There is no chemistry (and here I’m not talking in the sexual attraction sense – just chemistry) and its central conflict is too weak and solved too easily. It was basically just Aoi realizing he likes Sato and that’s it. Relationship problems solved!

The ending also came out of nowhere. Things weren’t tied up nicely. At one moment Aoi is isolating himself from everyone because he isn’t getting any jobs & blames himself for a certain accident for no reason and the next moment everything is fine, he has jobs and the urge to isolate himself is gone. I wanted to see this process, to understand his development, but the story doesn’t give me the chance to do so.

And that’s the problem with it. Too much happens too fast with very little development and because of that the ending feels unsatisfying. Still, I enjoyed some of the book: its setting and the idea of both characters’ personalities, mainly.

In conclusion, Would it be okay to love you? had a good premise and could have had good characters, but the execution was too weak to make that happen. 2.0 stars.

Sato is a businessman with a love for manga and robots. Aoi is a voice actor in manga drama. The two meet on New Years, and while both feel a spark, Aoi is not looking for a relationship, so the two strike up a friendship that proves difficult to maintain when both want more.

If you're looking for sweet romance without a lot of drama, then you will like this. The storyline bordered on boring, but the characters and their lives and cultures were so different from what I usually read that it kept me interested. Aoi's job seems really interesting and I would have like to hear more about that. Sato is just a sweet character through and through.

Um, I have never heard of ‘gay day’ at Tokyo Disney 🤔

Anyway. This book was a bit disappointing in some ways but mostly I guess I just didn’t like Aoi much. My first impression wasn’t a good one and it kinda stuck. He came across as snobby and bit like a prick.

And Sato’s voice bored me. He’s timid, nerdy and naive. Not bad traits but it somehow didn’t make him endearing rather than annoying.

As friends? They had no chemistry, no connection (in my eyes).

I found it a little hard to believe Sato would keep running after Aoi for some reason. The many times they had to discuss this “it’s not a date - No, we are not dating” made them seem even more childish.

I also found the storytelling mediocre, no offense, but there was no flow and the Japan vibe was pretty off. That’s one reason I’m not confident I could pull off a story believably 'Japanese'. It’s hard. My expectations might be high. Truthfully, I appreciate the author’s effort though.

Still, I didn’t connect with the guys so their story left me cold.

Their journey from friends to more was a tad boring to be honest. There was no actual development, nothing story wise that kept me wanting to turn the pages 😞 I was missing a certain chemistry... something that makes a romance sparkle, interesting and fun. Everything felt a little random.

I’m sorry if I sound like I’m totally bashing the author or hate on their story 😔 it just didn’t work for me and I think it could have profited from a little tweaking here and there.

Many thanks to Netgalley for providing a free copy to read and review.

So this was partially a case of missed expectations by a long shot. I went into this misguidedly thinking I had found a partially own voices gay asian romance novel by an asian author. I was wrong on that count which isnt the books fault more fault of my not researching properly before requesting. It only dampened my desire to continue slightly.

That aside I did not enjoy this book. I did not enjoy how Sato and Aoi's relationship developed at all. And found at times Aoi to be gaslighting Sato especially with that "friendship kiss". This book mainly felt as though it was just one weird happenstance after another and just culturally did not feel like Japan to me.

Sato's sister agreeing to go on a fake date and everything from the broken leg in the shower just felt off. Like there was a disconnect in the story itself. Also as a gundam fan I have to say Sunrise would never give up the rights to another smaller company for even a couple seasons. So while Sato working for his favorite animes studio made sense if you are already using Gundam you might as well just use Sunrise as the studio.

Even from the perspective of light fluff this didnt work for me. The issue with Aoi's parents felt terribly flat and wasnt developed well at all. Maybe if it had been longer but overall this book and I did not jive which is unfortunate