I went on a .99 cent shopping spree in the Harlequin manga section of the Kindle store recently, so here are some quick takes on bargain romance manga.

Maddie’s Love Child

The Maddie in question in this title is an Australian headstrong leather-garbed interior designer, who enjoys making rich and remote men fall in love with her and then stomps on their hearts. She’s also longing for a baby but not a husband, so she is determined to track down the perfect sperm donor. Miles McMillan, remote and rich British businessman comes back into her life. Maddie and Miles met previously but he rejected her advances because he was engaged. Now that he’s broken things off with his fiancee, he decides to return to Australia for business…and something else. Maddie and Miles start to date, but will her baby making schemes and romantic foibles, combined with his emotional reticence and uptight British ways result in a romance or just a whole bunch of emotional trauma? Maddie’s internal dialogues sizing up Miles’ fatherhood prospects (“My child would never learn his arrogance or cold pride. And I could give it all of my love!”) were pretty hilarious. The art in this title was a little stilted, but generally attractive. Maddie’s personality and forthright nature was refreshing compared to other Harlequin heroines, so if reading about emotionally distant British businessmen falling in love is one of the romance novel tropes that you enjoy, this title was worth the .99 cents.

Expecting the Boss’ Baby

In Harlequin world billionaire bachelors with attractive secretaries end up accidentally impregnating them FAR TOO OFTEN! Michael is a rich emotionally distant man who accidentally celebrates a business deal with his capable secretary Kate a bit too much. She’s now secretly pregnant and harbors feelings of affection towards Michael the millionaire robot, but he is oblivious and doesn’t want any sort of emotional connection with Kate. When he makes his feelings known to her, she promptly quits. Michael is emotional remote because he grew up in an orphanage, his only friends are a couple of other millionaires who dispense warped advice about women and relationships. When Michael realizes that Kate is pregnant, he’s determined to ensure that his child won’t grow up without a father. This was very much a middle of the road title for me. Both the story and art were about average in terms of what one would expect from a Harlequin manga adaptation. This is part of a trilogy, as I’m sure Michael’s millionaire bachelor friends also find themselves promptly married off in later installments.

The Royal Marriage

This title had the vaguely retro art that I tend to enjoy most when reading Harlequin manga. There are plenty of big eyes and flowing hair abounds as Gabriella, the Brazilian heiress finds herself trapped in a marriage with Prince Ricardo. Ricardo has the reputation of a playboy, but when Gabriella’s father dies, leaving her with no family and a will with some very odd provisions, she decides to go through with the marriage. Gabriella settles into her new rule as princess, while trying to figure out her feelings towards her new husband. There’s a bit of palace intrigue, and Gabriella is a bit sassier than the usual Harlequin heroine. Along with Maddie’s Love Child, this was the title I enjoyed the most out of this batch of four manga.

Word of a Gentleman

I tend to take notice when I find a Harlequin title with decent art, because mostly I tend to expect somewhat lackluster art. Of the batch, this had the worst artistic adaptation, with stilted, out of proportion characters. The sub-par quality of the lettering was also distracting. This was a bit of a shame, because aspects of the story were a bit interesting. Clarissa decides that she’s going to hire herself a poor husband in order to get away from the machinations of her evil guardian Uncle and the loutish pawing of her cousin. She fixates on Hugh Richfield, who actually decides to take her up on her offer to pay him to elope with her. Hugh and Clarissa take off for Gretna Green and have some adventures along the way. Unfortunately the happy ending where everybody suddenly becomes rich strains even my willing suspension of disbelief.

Although I’ve read a bit of manga on the Kindle app for my iPad, I haven’t actually read any manga on my newest toy – a Kindle Paperwhite. When I discovered that there were actually several Harlequin manga for sale for .99 cents on amazon, I wasted no time in purchasing them. I was particularly interested in these two titles, because I’d previously read another title adapted by Kazuko Fujita, Sale or Return Bride. I tend to assume that the art for these Harlequin adaptations is going to be fairly rushed, but either Fujita’s art is among the best that I’ve seen in a Harlequin manga. Her character designs are attractive, and she manages to convey a great deal of nuance in their facial expressions, with the end result that she ends up elevating the stories in these volumes. Backgrounds are sparse, and if you read Fujita’s manga one after the other you will notice that she only draws one basic hero, but she does draw him very well.

Buying Harlequin manga on the Kindle is a bit confusing because there are multiple editions for each title, but I’m linking to the editions that I bought and read here.

Angus’s Lost Lady by Kazuko Fujita and Marie Ferraella

Angus’s Lost Lady is the story of a PI and single father named Angus who is surprised to see a woman with with a lost shoe and amnesia on his doorstep. The only clue to her identity is the fact that she’s clutching his business card, but she hasn’t met him before. She has a head injury as a result from being grazed by a bullet. Since this is a romance manga Angus promptly moves the lost woman into his apartment, introducing her to his daughter Vikki and trying to jog her memory by giving her a phonebook to read. The woman decides to adopt the name Rebecca. Rebecca and Angus investigate her accident and missing memories, and along the way struggle with their attraction for each other. The old “woman in danger with amnesia” is not a novel plot device, but Fujita does a good job portraying the chemistry between Angus and Rebecca, and Rebecca isn’t as simpering and weak as many Harlequin amnesia ladies usually are.

The Seduction Bid by Kazuko Fujita and Amanda Browning

Perhaps it is due to my own anger management issues, but I generally enjoy it when women in romance manga yell a lot. In this case, the heroine of The Seduction Bid barges into an office and starts to chew out an incredibly handsome man who she thinks is an unscrupulous reporter for a local tabloid. Carrie is determined to defend one of her friends from scandal. While she is momentarily distracted by the stormy grey eyes of the man she is yelling at, she ends up storming out of the office ranting about “garbage journalism”. The man with the mysterious grey eyes decides that he wants to be yelled at forever and vows to marry her. Later, as Carrie is hanging out at the house belonging to the parents of her late husband she is introduced to the object of her rant and he turns out to be Lance, cousin of the gutter journalist. Lance then proceeds to relentlessly pursue the reluctant Carrie, and his charm gradually begins to wear down her well developed defense mechanisms.

The attractive art makes these volumes a pleasure to read, and the stories are basically what you’d expect from Harlequin. Reading these on the Kindle was fine – the size of the manga to fit the Kindle screen is about what you’d see in a Japanese tankobon, and since the backgrounds of the manga weren’t particularly detailed, the smaller reading size for the manga didn’t make much of a difference. At only a dollar a pop, buying these is a no-brainer for anyone who enjoys Harlequin manga.