★★☆☆☆ | Okay but quite generic

👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨 m/m
👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨 friends to lovers
👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨 internalised homophobia
👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨 opposites attract

Kasumi and Kyousuke are polar opposites when it comes to personality. Kasumi is reserved, soft-spoken and shy; Kyousuke is energetic and has always been popular among their peers. As the saying goes though, opposites have a tendency to attract, and these two have been fast friends since elementary school. To Kasumi, Kyousuke has always been a hero to look up to, someone who supports him and saves him from the bullies. But now, school is over; their relationship suddenly becomes a lot less simple to describe. Facing the world — and one another — as adults, both men find there are things they struggle to say out loud, even to each other.

Overall, I felt that it was pretty generic.

Lots of angst — I was ready for some but I hoped for more of the cute friends to lovers but nah it was all we can’t be together because blah blah blah and lots of internalised homophobia. Oh, and then a sudded realisation and smut.

Sadly, I’ve read dozens of yaoi manga just like that and it gets very boring very fast.

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★★★,5☆ | Cute, diverse historical romance

👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩 f/f
👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩 desi & fat rep
👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩 Edwardian
👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩 includes smut

Patience is a kindhearted country girl, eking out a living in Edwardian England as tremors of social change rock the world around her. When she starts her employment in formal service on the grounds of an opulent country manor, she has no idea that her own personal revolution is about to begin.

Selfless, dutiful, and just a touch naive, she takes to both her place as a parlor maid and to her new roommate, the bookish and progressive lady’s maid, Esther. In another time, the two women would have kept one another’s company forever in their little attic bedroom, living out their days in the employ of a Lord. But it’s now the dawn of a new age. The expanding empire has brought with it not only plundered wealth, but worldliness and new ideas. Suffragists agitate in the street, idle-rich bohemians challenge sexual mores, and Patience and Esther slowly come to realize the world is wider and full of more adventure and opportunity than they ever imagined . . . so long as they find the will to seize it.

Sensual, sweet, and beautifully illustrated, PATIENCE & ESTHER is a steamy period romance and an inspirational erotic journey across the epic sweep of history, from the end of a gilded age to the start of an uncharted future.

It was a sweet Edwardian f/f romance.

It’s body-posi, has an Indian rep, mentions the suffrage movement, the class disproportions, AND is sex-positive.

The Main Couple aren’t the only queer characters either — throughout the story, it is shown that queer people existed and had means of finding each other.

The story was more of the progress of the couple’s daily lives than some bigger plot but it was still enjoyable and it clearly was well-researched.

Also, I liked that it was finished off with a small Modern Times AU chapter.

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