A Business Proposal Volume 2 Review

In Volume 1 of A Business Proposal, Hari Shin decided to help out her wealthy friend Youngseo by pretending to be her at a blind date in exchange for money. What she didn’t expect was for Taemu Kang to show up: her company’s CEO. Hari Shin can’t let him figure out that she’s one of his employees, so she does all she can to make him lose interest in her. Too bad Taemu won’t let her go, even when he finds out that she is not Youngseo.

Taemu needs Shin Kim (Hari’s fake name) to play the part of the pretend girlfriend so that his grandfather will stop sending him on blind dates. The only thing Taemu cares about is his job, and the blind dates are just a waste of time when he could be working. Shin wants to stay away from Taemu as much as possible. She  doesn’t want to lose her job at the company, but when he offers her money to play the pretend fiancée, she can’t resist. Hari knows it’s a bad idea. She needs to juggle two identities at the same time, without anyone finding out. Only Youngseo knows, but she won’t hesitate to help Hari as, after all, it’s Youngseo’s fault that Hari got into this situation.

When Taemu proposes to practice being a couple, more funny mishaps ensue as Hari doesn’t know how to behave. When an accident with a potted plant risks revealing Hari’s true identity and ruin Taemu’s plans for her, the two of them need to decide how and whether to continue their fake relationship, while dragging along Youngseo and Taemu’s secretary, Mr. Cha.

A Business Proposal is a rom-com manhwa. It’s full of the kind of comical accidents that you’d expect in this kind of love story: a lot of (wrong) assumptions, everything that can ensue from fake dating and amusing friends. It reminds me more of novels such as The Hating Game by Sally Thorne and The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood than other manga or manhwa. In fact, the manhwa originally started as a web novel, and then it got adapted into a manhwa and a K-drama. I think Perilla, the person who adapted the story into a manhwa, did a great job because the elements that you would expect in a rom-com novel didn’t get lost ‘in translation’ while being incorporated into the original story by Haehwa with the illustrations by Narak.

Hari is a modern woman with not much dating experience and an unrequited crush on a friend. When she decides to help out her friend with the fake date, Hari doesn’t expect her encounter with Taemu to develop to the extent where she ends up seeing every day. Taemu on the other hand seems cold-hearted, but we start getting glimpses of his past and of his relationship with his secretary. There’s more to him than meets the eye.

Both Youngseo and Mr. Cha get more storytime in this volume as well, and it seems like their relationship might develop at the same time as Hari and Taemu’s. But when Mr. Cha finds out about the secret that Youngseo is keeping, he needs to figure out where his loyalty lies. There is so much drama and angst in this book that it gave me butterflies in my stomach. I’m now wishing for a happy ending for our characters, although past crushes and enemies are coming back and they might mess up the progress that our characters are making.

The illustrations and the colour palette keep to the theme of office romance—with light and pastel colours that make romance come to mind. While manga has to rely on symbols and specific illustrations such as lines, dots and gradients of grey, manhwa artists can be less specific with background art because they have the advantage of colour that can evoke feelings. Pink, red and pastel shades make a romance feeling come to mind, and we can expect to find a lot of these colour combinations in this manhwa. In addition, the use of chibi characters at times enhances the comedy aspect of the story, making it even cuter.

A Business Proposal is written by Haehwa, illustrated by Narak and adapted by Perilla. It’s released in the English language by Ize Press with a translation by Tapas Entertainment, Inc. Volume 3 is slated for release in November 2023.

Our review copy from Ize Press was supplied by Diamond Book Distributors UK.