Manga: Love and Lies

Love and Lies
Rating: 3/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher! 

Love is forbidden. When you turn 16, the government will assign your marriage partner.- This dystopian manga about teen love and defiance is a sexy, funny, and dramatic new hit! 
Yukari is dull. He doesn't even stand out enough to be bullied - he's just a generally lower-middle-class kid. He's in love with Misaki, the most popular girl in school. There's just one problem: He's 15, one year away from receiving his government-assigned marriage partner. He normally wouldn't have the courage to defy the law, but his sickly classmate Ririna still believes in love, and won't stop goading him into confessing his feelings!

I've been intrigued by this ever since I saw it was getting adapted in to an anime, so I jumped at the chance to check out the manga. I'm not sure what to make of it to be honest, I feel like it's setting up a harem type thing, which I'm not really here for, and the set up between our main character and the girl he likes doesn't seem all that strong just from the one volume, and there's one other thing that I'll get to in a bit, buuuttt I'm intrigued enough to keep reading this series. 

Okay, so the world has an interesting, if a little strange set up. Sixteen seems like kind of a young age to have this whole arranged marriage government thing going on but then again it's not like it's never been unheard of before. 

Love and Lies is funny from the start, and it has its cute moments. I can relate to both Lilina and Yukari. I like their interactions and how they chat openly with each other, and how Lilina has offered to help him in her own blunt way. I really do love how blunt she is. Bless her. Lilina wants to know what it's like to fall in love and she has trouble interacting with other girls so she's often left out and alone. Yukari is kind of hapless to be honest. I wanted to smack him once or twice. He's not very confident and he's kind of nerdy and it's kind of a sods law thing with him. As for Takasaki....I can understand her wanting to protect herself from getting hurt, but she's definitely lying about something and I feel like there's more to it than that. I'm actually really suspicious of her, and I can't decide if she's just messing with him or not, like possibly she's trying to make someone else jealous and that someone would be Nisaka from what I can see. 

I spent so long in this volume trying to work out what Nisaka is up to. Then there was the plot twist at the end involving him and I really didn't see it coming. I was actually really stoked about it at the time, and I was all ready to ship him and Yukari but my issue with the whole thing is first of all the harem aspect. Second of all, I feel like they're just baiting us with Nisaka, if he really does have feelings for Yukari. The more I thought about it, the more I realised this manga is most likely not going to go down that route, so the baiting is probably going to bug me more and more as the volumes go on. But I guess we'll see. 

I have two ships already from this first volume, and I'm so torn. I know ones going to sink and I'm actually really gutted about it. I think you can guess which ship I'm talking about. 

Love and Lies is really fast paced, and I breezed through this volume. The arts quite good and kind of cute, and the concept is interesting. The romance hooked me in, as did the general cuteness and drama, not to mention the humour! I'm totally with Lilina on most things and I ship her with Yukari more than the intended girl...which may or may not be a problem. I have a feeling I know which way this is going to go, but I'm not sure if I'm just being overly suspicious and unfair to the other girl. We'll see. The only problem I foresee for this manga is the situation with Nisaka. It would be really awesome to have a gay character, and for it not to be just a baiting situation but I don't have very high hopes. 

Either way Love and Lies is a quick, fun, and cute manga, that's definitely got a feel good vibe and should at least make you chuckle a little bit! I'm definitely interested in this enough to give it another volume to see where it goes!