Evil lurks beneath the most beautiful surfaces…

Unmarried at 32, temp worker Yuki Sato is determined to find a husband for the sake of her ailing father, who wants nothing more than to see his beloved daughter in a wedding dress before he dies. Enter Yoji, the perfect man she meets on a dating app. Now Yuki is finally ready to settle down—until the beguiling Shun confronts her with the details of his brother’s mysterious death, and she discovers that her fiancé may not be who he seems—!

A world of digital deceit gives way to very real danger in this tense romantic thriller.

This manga was not what I expected, and I mean that in a positive way. This has all the makings of a solid thriller with characters you can’t trust, a mysterious death, a missing woman, and double lives.

We first meet Yuki and her fiancé Yoji and see that they are a lovey dovey couple.

But there are warning signs. Yoji keeps making excuses to put off the marriage and wedding, a lot of them being financial. He postpones meeting Yuki’s father. And, in a more subtle panel, he helps himself to the cash in Yuki’s purse as he is saying goodbye. There’s also a scheme where Yuki continues to hunt for men on the dating app, but I didn’t entirely get what was up with that, so I can’t really comment on that here.

One day, Shun appears at Yuki’s workplace and pretends to have met her before, and the two go outside to talk. Shun shows Yuki a picture of his dead brother, saying he died in an accident, and asks her if she knows anything about it or has anything to do with it. He also brings up Yoji as someone who cannot be trusted.

Shun plants the seed of doubt in Yuki’s mind, and she takes Shun’s advice to track down the conversation school Yoji is said to be running, only to find out it’s not there–the address instead points to a club.

Shun persistently keeps his tabs on Yuki and confronts her several times, and the plot thickens…and that’s all I’m going to reveal.

Shun seems to be like a good guy and you want to trust him, but his obsession with his brother’s death has sometimes led him to stop caring about anything else. Although, you can see the stirrings of something potentially romantic there with Yuki.

Yoji is despicable, all charm and no heart. He is manipulative and duplicitous, and the threatening choice he makes at the very end of this volume is a shocker. You immediately sense danger is coming and are filled with dread. You can’t help but feel bad for Yuki and wonder if there’s a part of her that hates herself–why did she allow herself to be engaged to such a creep? Is the pressure for marriage that strong that she would put herself in harm’s way?

This manga is full of twists and turns. It’s fast paced and a well-illustrated volume. The ending immediately made me want to dive into Volume 2 and I desperately want to know what will happen to these characters.

If you like romantic mystery thrillers, you can’t go wrong with giving this a try.