Hye-sung has spent his entire life thinking he was a recessive Alpha, but, while working as a waiter at a party, he meets Dojin, a dominant Alpha, enters his first heat cycle, and discovers that he's actually an Omega. Specifically, he's a recessive Omega, so he'll likely have difficulty finding medication that can suppress his heat cycle and it'll be harder for him to get pregnant. The main characters are rough around the edges and rough around each other. Hye-sung made me wanna toss the book across the room occasionally. Yet somehow all in all it works?? And I am eager to get my hand on the next volume?

Love is an Illusion! Vol. 1 by Fargo | Goodreads Love is an Illusion! Vol. 1 by Fargo | Goodreads

Dojin was a bit better at the end, but he was controlling, manipulative, rude protagonist who took advantage of someone in heat and then basically used their bad position in life to hold them there. Regardless, I remember now vividly why I had such mixed feelings when I read this years ago. Between Hye-sung having 0 brain cells—boy is so prone to scams! please use your brain, I’m begging 😭—and Dojin being in denial about his interest in Hye-sung this is…a lot in a manga 💀 one of the main characters thought he was an alpha most of his life, but he finds out he is a recessive omega.Hye-sung and the BFF were honestly the most annoying parts for me. There is only so much Hye-sung’s “stupidity” could be used as an excuse for some of the frustrating choices he made through this book. The only likable characters here were Dojin’s family and sadly we don’t see them often enough to make reading this series enjoyable. It'd be nice to know more about why Hye-sung has spent his entire life hiding that he's actually really good at math, and I am morbidly curious about Dojin's stiffly awkward family. But I don't know that I'm curious enough about any of that to put up with more heat cycle rapiness. I really wanted some of the warmth and sweetness of the cover art, and this volume gave me none of that. At first I was gonna mark this as dubious consent, but besties there’s literally multiple scenes of assault 💀 Am I surprised? No. Am I still gonna buy the rest of the volumes? Yes. But I did not really like either of the MCs. In different ways, they're both irritating and not great people, but also I'm weirdly fascinated by seeing what happens next with them? It's like when I watched Big Dragon and thought "you're both the worst and I sort of need to see you end up together for some reason."

Love is an Illusion! - Penguin Random House

They're a terrible couple who are terrible for each other. The main thing tying them together is the fact that Hye-sung seems to be Dojin's muse (find another source of inspiration!), and Hye-sung is a dumbass whose idiocy makes Dojin understandably worried. Hye-sung, there are no non-sketchy ways for you to make money fast, so stop falling for scams! So, I took a chance and bought a Managa with a cute cover at Barnes and noble that was wrapped in plastic for mature content.the marriage scene between the first couple, where it's quite late in their relationship and have decided to stay together for the baby or Hye-sung will quite literally die. Hye-sung rejected Dojin the first time, because he didn't feel ready (being married at age 20 is very odd in Korea, its too young in your career to be worth considering unless you are lined up to marry by your parents or you're already well off,) but has second doubts on what marriage is when he sees the relationship between Dojin's parents, and worries for answering that question in Byul's future. Which is a fair assessment. The issue is this all happens within one short chapter, and every step of the way to it reads like sandpaper. Hye-sung's marriage preposal isn't really a preposal, he's again doing this just because Dojin wants to, and for Byul, while Dojin talks to him like he's someone he met at a work function and they're now sharing drinks at a bar. And so it continues on the same. You do very briefly get to see a glimpse of what could be with Dojin putting on the wedding dress and his dialogue after, but it's outweighed by the other sixty chapters to reach that point. I'm reminded of Killing Stalking where people were upset about the non-consensual sex scenes among the multitude of morally wrong romance scenes in the manwha and heavily demonized people who enjoyed the medium. But I encourage people to recognize that not every piece of medium has to be wholesome and healthy to be enjoyable, and that many people can distinguish fiction from reality and would be the first people to intervene should they see a dynamic like that in real life. It ends rather anti-climactically, the pacing starts to unravel in general for this webtoon at this point, but Heesoo is kidnapped, and we find out Chowon can't let go of Dojun because of a desire to be loved and Heesoo having what Chowon never did in his marriage-- a deep contrast to how it worked out for them compared to how the first couple miraculously makes it work. But Chowon is caught again, and Dojun finally files charges against Chowon, but the only taking the agreement that Chowon seeks help with no further repercussions and leaves Chowon's life.