Apple and Honey (Yaoi Manga) Paperback – October 7, 2014

The best thing about this book is the art. The lines and shading is very nicely done. The mangaka is a true artist. Many of the illustrations could be displayed in a gallery. I like that the characters look Asian for once. The stories are the sad/funny slice of life type. The book is mostly sweet BL. The epilogue is not. The characterization is good too. But the stories float along, not really going anywhere. Somehow satisfying but leave you wanting more. Its frustrating, so I took off a star.

I think that "The Blue Parasol on the Beach" is one of the most utterly gorgeous shounen-ai stories I have ever read. And I would call that opening story shounen-ai, probably.But just speaking as a rare gay man who reads this silliness, that story rises above all the silly fluff and rote tropes one normally sees in this genre, and some really thoughtful and beautifully expressed *art* comes out. Art that very eloquently expresses some universal truths about being a young gay man. Just the image described in the title - the blue parasol on the beach - and what it represents in the story. I taught English Lit briefly, and I could teach more out of this story than I could out of a lot of the required nonsense on the curriculum.

It isn't a whole story. It goes out of order and is a bit off. Its like an incomplete story that they put together in a weird order. Cute but odd. Some was just thrown in there.

The drawing was ok but I just could not get into this the first story I liked but the other's meh .Not the best collection but most are pretty sweet needs a better summary

Great story

I waited SO long for this to finally come out! I LOVE my copy and definitely recommend it to any and all yaoi lovers. Super cute and funny!

It's a meh collection of stories. I personally liked the first story the best and found the second "end of the world" themed story kind of lame and confusing. That said I would recommend this to people who like to read sweet stories about realistic guys that are slice of life type stories.The first story: The Blue Parasol on the Beach and Apple and Honey is the story of the cover couple : Natsuki and Komano.These two are a bit strange. Natsuki admits he's a homosexual and admits he had regrets over giving it up to a random guy and becoming someone else's thing. He kind of just keeps to himself and keeps Komano who's a year younger then him at a distance. Komano is a strangely popular guy who's kind of slow and dliberate (i'd call it a wolf in sheeps clothing). These two eventually spark up a realtionship and seem to get along well. The first story is about them on a beach trip with other students and the second is about how they met.The second story Shades of Summer,Is about having no regets and settling your past incase for some reason the world were to end. I got the message behind it but found the main male a little annoying and strange. But then again their almost love affair and years of unrequestered feelings just seems to fit in well with the story's theme.So long story short I would recommend to friends that like cute slice of life stories about guys with moderate issues :)If you liked Wolf Magic by Natsuki Zippo then you will most likely find Apple and Honey to be cute as well.

A lot of people seem to admire this art style, but I actually think it's ugly. The lines are very wobbly like someone with a shaking hand drew it, and there is no detail at all in the facial features, especially the eyes.The stories are likewise bland. The first two and the last story are about the same teen couple, but told in backwards order. The book begins with them sneaking off from their group of friends at the beach to make out in secret. Then comes the annoying and offensive trope that one of the boys is "straight" (yeah, right). They decide to admit their relationship to their friends, but the whole time there has been this female in the group who has been hitting on both of them. By the time they come out, their friends are more excited that the female was just asked out by one of the guys, so nobody cares. The story after that is about how they met, which makes no sense. The "straight" boy pretended he had a curry club just to trick the gay one into having lunch with him. (The gay one also uses the "f_g" slur for gay, which I didn't like much better than one of them supposedly being straight.) The final story about them is just a PWP to insert a single sex scene into the book, during which the "straight" character is the only one that can get aroused and the openly gay character couldn't be less interested.The other story in this book is really terrible. It plays on the theory that the world would end in 2012 according to the Mayan calendar. So one man, ten years after graduating high school, decides to look up his old school crush and confess himself. Again, this man professes his heterosexuality while simultaneously swearing his undying love for this other man. They don't end up together, they just hang out, convinced the world is going to end. When they realize it won't, they just part ways and it's over. There was no plot or purpose to any of it. No romance, just disappointment for the characters and the reader.

Such a lovely Story!!!Just loved it. I read the sequel and I think it is really important to understand the story completely. If you read just this volume probably you will be a little bit confused.