Kimi koso Boku no Koi Monogatari

[MangaDex]

 

[Choco_Pudding]

This is actually good. Don't let the edgy cover scare you off. The pacing is a little fast, but that's pretty much its only drawback. I enjoyed it a lot more than I was expecting to. The characters have heart, and felt quite real - I understood and related to their actions more often than not. The drama was just enough to keep it going at the points where you expected them to toss some in anyway, and it was all resolved rather nicely without dragging on past its due. Also, there was one thing that surprised me (not a huge spoiler but it does drive the manga and is also the only surprising point, so read at your own risk)

Spoiler

The reason the male lead stopped writing isn't that the woman he was basing his stories on left him and he oh-so-dramatically swore off love and writing forever, like we've all seen a million times before. No, what happened is much more interesting and unfortunately realistic than that: his editor betrayed him to the media and made a big deal of him having a person as his muse, and as he was a popular writer, the internet managed to track her down and doxx her, ruining her life for awhile. They weren't even dating. Naturally he was horrified and couldn't bring himself to write after what happened. The female lead brings him to meet the girl he used to love and talk with her about what happened, and they both walk away from it happier people with a lighter conscience. (His old love had been pretty mean to him about it at the time, but that's also rather understandable.)