Reviewed by Taylor Rector for TeensReadToo.com

This book was actually written in Japan and was first published in Japanese. It has only been available in English for a few months, but SOCRATES IN LOVE is the best-selling hardcover of all time in Japan. This book is like the Japanese version of THE NOTEBOOK.

In this story, Sakutaro, an average high school boy, falls in love with a girl named Aki. They grow into an inseparable couple and they do everything together. Aki and Sakutaro have some wild adventures, and fall into true, head-over-heels love. They plan to get married and have children together until Aki is diagnosed with leukemia. They don't know what they will do without each other when she is gone. These are the kinds of characters that you want to see succeed and be happy.

I liked this book because it has such an amazing storyline and the characters are so well introduced that you feel like you know them. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves to read about true love, whether they are male or female, as everyone can truly enjoy this book. ( )

Socrates in Love is the story of a boy and girl who fall in love and their struggles once the girl is diagnosed with leukemia. It's a high school romance about a bittersweet, innocent love. And it was highly praised enough that I decided to give it a try despite my lack of interest in shoujo.

In the end, I find it to be (in tone, execution, and pretty much anything else) exactly how one would expect such a story to be. Though it's a bit quick and probably would have been better let out over two or three volumes of manga rather than all packed into one, it's generally well done and I found it considerably less irritating than the usual shoujo. But really I'm not the terminal illness love story type either, and to actually have me enjoy it it would have had to have a little more than just the usual steps done fairly well. The characters in particular were nothing but good, honest, earnest, caring people, which I think is just too often the case with these types of stories, as if people must be perfect in order for them to be sympathetic and for their story to be truly tragic.

I have read that the original author of this story intended it to be about how falling in love changes us and makes us see beyond ourselves and put the happiness of another above our own. While I suppose this does literally happen to the male character within the story, at least in this manga adaptation I didn't feel this coming out as some big pervading theme/life-lesson as the author seemed to intend. It doesn't really strike me as being 'about' anything except a sad love story.

If you like stories about innocent love or love broken apart by illness/tragedy and don't mind it being a bit bland, I suppose you'll get exactly what you're looking for and enjoy it quite a bit. For others who don't usually go for this sort of thing but are interested because of the high praise, you might be a little disappointed. ( )