Perilla

I love a good fake dating trope and this breezy adult manga was cute. When Hari Shin's best friend, an heiress, gets set up on a blind date with some millionaire CEO she doesn't want to go. She instead pays Hari to go on the date pretending to be her and bomb the date so he never calls her again. Hari dons a wig and a sultry persona and comes face to face with her boss. She is desperate to not get recognized and he is desperate to just marry the next person he says (ie the blind date) to get show more his family off his back. It's a comedy of errors and is done well in manga form. I look forward to reading more in the series. show less

A cheesy little rom-com with potential.

An office worker pretends to be her rich friend for a blind date that -- through one of the many forced coincidences that serve as the backbone of this series -- turns out to be with the new CEO of her company. Over-the-top lies and absurd misunderstandings abound.

But, hey, it's sort of cute in a dumb way and is about adults instead of teens.

If you do check it out, do not read the character summaries offered at the start of the book as they are loaded show more with spoilers for the story.

If you'd rather just watch the story, a TV series adaptation streams on Netflix. Both this Korean comic (which originally appeared on WebToon) and the show are adapted from a novel series by Haehwa. I haven't seen the show or read the original books.

FOR REFERENCE:

Contents: Chapters 1-14 -- Translation Notes show less

Overheated soap opera dragged out by inebriated mistakes and stupid misunderstandings. All the characters are adult, but the script seems like it is written by a tween imagining how adults act.

Despite all the cheese, I almost started caring about the characters again by the end, so I might pick up the next volume if it appears at my local library.

FOR REFERENCE:

Contents: Chapters 28-40 -- Translation Notes

The constant stream of stupid soap opera plot developments erodes the charm of the first volume. The characters are okay, so I might try another volume if I come across it at the library, but I'm not going to be disappointed if that never happens.

FOR REFERENCE:

Contents: Chapters 15-27 -- Translation Notes