I got this fair-condition ex-library softcover on sale from Better World Books. (It's the first of a four-volume series of which I've read the first three volumes, and I liked them well enough to pick up another release-copy of this one.)

I've enjoyed many works by this author, including the very yaoi Gerard & Jacques, the not-yaoi-at-all Garden Dreams, and the slice-of-life Not Love But Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy and What Did You Eat Yesterday?. This one's on the slice-of-life side, dealing with the daily concerns of high school students, and is very charming indeed.

Here we meet main character Harutaro, starting high school a month late after a bout with leukemia. He's very cheerful and friendly - and open; he explains his illness as part of his first introduction to his classmates. He immediately befriends the short, plump Shota, who's in the manga club with one other person, tall, dark, bespectacled Majima (who's an avid otaku and is shockingly insensitive to everybody else's feelings).

We also meet Shigeru, the handsome young teacher, whose relationship with another teacher (a married man) causes our outspoken hero considerable distress. This gets to the point where he confronts Shigeru to complain about it - not "the gay thing", mind, but breaking up a family. That's when he finds out something surprising about Shigeru, which took me by surprise as well... [Nice fakeout for the readers, author!]

The story features lots of lovely little scenes of school-age awkwardness, tentative friendships, feuds, and humor - lots of humor, especially when the guys discuss what kind of manga they might draw, and get into a debate over just where to draw the line with hentai (naughty/sexy) plots.

There are some great character scenes, too, such as when Harutaro defends Shota from what seems to be good-natured ribbing in swim class, and gets his ass handed to him by Shigeru for embarrassing his friend. This leads to a marvelously awkward scene at Shota's house where both boys wind up apologizing to each other - and where we get to meet Shota's folks, who are great fun themselves. [So few manga let the parents have much of a role, and when they do it's often a negative one; Shota's folks are very refreshing. Come to think of it, Harutaro's father is, too, though he's more comic relief - he shows up at random, he works as a chicken-sexer (a real job, btw) - as does Harutaro's mother, who's working overseas now. Seems the hospital expenses for his leukemia have made his folks have to live apart for the sake of better-paying jobs... {sniffle}]

There's a very funny bit in which the class plays a joke on Majima, only to live in fear of what he'll do in retaliation; they do come up with a great way to apologize to him, but he's not the type to forgive and forget. (He gets his own bonus chapter, in which he tackles a major comic convention; also very entertaining.)

I really love the characters in this series, and the stories keep surprising me; mostly gentle little plot twists, but very personal.

See also:

Volume Two
Volume Three

Guidelines for safely visiting and stocking Little Free Libraries during the COVID-19 pandemic, from the LFL site here.

I left this book in the Little Free Library while admiring the blooming forsythia. Hope someone enjoys the book!

[See other recent releases in MA here.]

*** Released for the 2020 April Showers/May Flowers challenge. ***