Love at Fourteen, Vol. 1

3/5 stars

Summary:
Kanata Tanaka and Kazuki Yoshikawa are middle-schoolers who are revered by the other students for their air of maturity, good grades, and so forth. They are, in fact, unbeknownst to most folks, childhood friends who hide their friendship due to the discomfort of the attention they get separately from others. This gets complicated because they eventually fall for each other and start going out.

It's a rather quick and fun read. There isn't much drama other than the one caused by Nihito. The manga mainly focuses on the main couple, but we get glimpses of other characters. I wasn't really sure what was happening between Nihito and the music teacher. It seemed as if he either hates teachers or he just hates singing. Perhaps this will be addressed in volume two. Overall, I give it a 3 star rating.

This is an odd creature, a slice-of-life school romance manga. The main characters were friends for a long time but nobody else seems to realize it and they seem to pair up by default. Nothing much happens. The chapters are short and the continuity between them is minimal.

At the end of the book there's a scene where the boy gets hunted down by the hot music teacher and forced to sing for his grade. It comes off as creepy and out of place.