Synopsis: Unmarried at 32, temp worker Yuki Sato is determined to find a husband for the sake of her ailing father, who wants nothing more than to see his beloved daughter in a wedding dress before he dies. Enter Yoji, the perfect man she meets on a dating app. Now Yuki is finally ready to settle down—until the beguiling Shun confronts her with the details of his brother’s mysterious death, and she discovers that her fiancé may not be who he seems—!

A world of digital deceit gives way to very real danger in this tense romantic thriller.

Review: As an unmarried woman in her early 30s, Yuki is under constant pressure from those around her, and online culture, to settle down and find a man. There is no space for her to be single or to have agency and independence outside of her relationship to a man. This pressure makes her vulnerable. When she meets a man online he seems perfect for her perceived needs.

Cracks appear right away when he feeds her a story about being on the hook for a former business partner’s debts and he convinces her to stay on the dating apps to try and match with someone who could be a potential new business partner for him.

When a second man shows up to her job looking for a missing woman, Yuki can’t ignore the cracks in her relationship any longer. She helps this new man with his investigation and has to grapple with all of this new information and where her head and heart truly are.

Whoever You Are, I love You is a psychological romantic thriller about the societal pressures put on women. It’s also a kind of love triangle filtered through a thriller lens. There are different facets of herself that she presents to the different guys as she’s caught in the middle of trying to learn the truth about the situation but also herself and who she really is.

By the end of the first volume a lot of the groundwork is laid out, the new investigation has produced its first leads, and the pressure on her increases. I believe this is a four volume set with volume 2 due out in Jan 2027. I haven’t seen release dates yet for Vols 3 & 4 but the series may be completed in 2027.

So far Whoever You Are, I Love You is a really good pressure cooker thriller, with an almost Hitchcockian lead, an every woman who gets in over her head. I’m really curious to see how things play out in later volumes.

Rating: positive/highly recommended

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