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Midnight Secretary
I picked up volume 1 of Midnight Secretary from the library. It was kind of silly and trashy (in a good way) and a lot of fun. Kaya becomes the secretary of company director Kyohei, who frankly comes off as a jerk at first. He rudely declares that he doesn't want an unattractive woman working for him, and he's a womanizer who has a string of lovers waltzing in and out of the office. Kaya thinks he's a jerk too, but is stubbornly determined to impress him with her secretarial skills, which she does in spite of himself. And of course along the way, she discovers that Kyohei is actually a vampire, and his lovers are "food". (He drinks a little blood from them during their, ahem, passionate encounters, which leaves a little anemic but otherwise unharmed and unaware of what really happened.)
Kyohei blackmails Kayo into keeping his secret (by threatening to fire her mother, who also works for their company), which makes him doubly a jerk, but he also acknowledges Kayo's hard work and accepts her as his secretary. Fortunately, from this point on, he becomes less of a jerk, and it soon becomes clear to Kayo and the readers that his jerkishness is partly a front, as he's taken it upon himself to do the necessary dirty work for the company, so that his older brother (the heir and future president) will be able to keep his hands clean. To be fair to the brother, he seems like a nice guy and hasn't forced this on Kyohei, and is in fact worried about Kyohei taking on said dirty work. I was expecting a rivalry between the brothers, but they seem to genuinely love each other, which was a nice surprise.
Of course it turns out that Kayo is not so plain after all once she takes off her glasses and lets down her hair, in typical Hollywood "not-so-ugly duckling turns into a swan" fashion. And it's no surprise that Kyohei has to "feed" on Kayo during an emergency, and that they start falling for each other, though neither wants to admit it.
So I really enjoyed the first volume--it was an entertaining, mostly light-hearted read that I could enjoy without thinking too deeply about it. Though I did end up thinking a bit more than I intended: I enjoyed the hints of interesting worldbuilding with the vampires. Going out during the day doesn't turn Kyohei into a pile of ash, but direct sunlight weakens him, so he does a lot of work at night or indoors, and shields himself from the sun when he has to go out during the day. Crosses don't harm him (he gives a cross necklace to one of his mistresses), but feelings of deep religious faith do. I'm also wondering what's up with his family: his father and brother are clearly human, so I'm not sure if he's adopted or if vampire genes are recessive or what.
But now that I'm hooking on this fun, trashy vampire romance, it turns out that the other volumes are missing from the library! They're in the catalog, but are marked missing because...idk, I guess someone decided to steal volumes 2-7 but left the first one behind for some reason? And why steal from the frigging library when you can borrow the books for free? Argh! So now I have to decide whether I want to shell out the money to buy the rest of the series, which I hadn't been planning on doing. If it was just about the romance, I'd probably pass, but I'm curious enough about the vampires and Kyohei's family that I'll probably break down and buy it eventually.
Btw, if it matters, the series is rated "Mature," although I'd say vol. 1 is more "PG-13," but I'm guessing from the summaries for the later books that the sexiness factor ramps up as Kayo's and Kyohei's romance heats up.
Kyohei blackmails Kayo into keeping his secret (by threatening to fire her mother, who also works for their company), which makes him doubly a jerk, but he also acknowledges Kayo's hard work and accepts her as his secretary. Fortunately, from this point on, he becomes less of a jerk, and it soon becomes clear to Kayo and the readers that his jerkishness is partly a front, as he's taken it upon himself to do the necessary dirty work for the company, so that his older brother (the heir and future president) will be able to keep his hands clean. To be fair to the brother, he seems like a nice guy and hasn't forced this on Kyohei, and is in fact worried about Kyohei taking on said dirty work. I was expecting a rivalry between the brothers, but they seem to genuinely love each other, which was a nice surprise.
Of course it turns out that Kayo is not so plain after all once she takes off her glasses and lets down her hair, in typical Hollywood "not-so-ugly duckling turns into a swan" fashion. And it's no surprise that Kyohei has to "feed" on Kayo during an emergency, and that they start falling for each other, though neither wants to admit it.
So I really enjoyed the first volume--it was an entertaining, mostly light-hearted read that I could enjoy without thinking too deeply about it. Though I did end up thinking a bit more than I intended: I enjoyed the hints of interesting worldbuilding with the vampires. Going out during the day doesn't turn Kyohei into a pile of ash, but direct sunlight weakens him, so he does a lot of work at night or indoors, and shields himself from the sun when he has to go out during the day. Crosses don't harm him (he gives a cross necklace to one of his mistresses), but feelings of deep religious faith do. I'm also wondering what's up with his family: his father and brother are clearly human, so I'm not sure if he's adopted or if vampire genes are recessive or what.
But now that I'm hooking on this fun, trashy vampire romance, it turns out that the other volumes are missing from the library! They're in the catalog, but are marked missing because...idk, I guess someone decided to steal volumes 2-7 but left the first one behind for some reason? And why steal from the frigging library when you can borrow the books for free? Argh! So now I have to decide whether I want to shell out the money to buy the rest of the series, which I hadn't been planning on doing. If it was just about the romance, I'd probably pass, but I'm curious enough about the vampires and Kyohei's family that I'll probably break down and buy it eventually.
Btw, if it matters, the series is rated "Mature," although I'd say vol. 1 is more "PG-13," but I'm guessing from the summaries for the later books that the sexiness factor ramps up as Kayo's and Kyohei's romance heats up.