Well, turns out The Beast King: Master of Medicines has a cinnamon roll with teeth . . .

I had seen this manga last year on Bedetheque, the site for updates on Franco-Belgian graphic novels, and the title of the French edition made me laugh: “Beast King and Medicinal Herb.” Yes, in English. Sounds like broken English, right? Not sure why it wasn’t something like Le Roi des Bêtes et les plantes médicinales. I took notice because it seemed like it was a Beauty & Beast story, but forgot about it until I saw it had been translated into English. In total, there are 3 volumes planned for 2026 in English: the 1st already published in February, the 2nd coming out in June, and the 3rd in October; but in French (and I think also in Spanish) there’s six volumes already published, in case you don’t want to wait for the English translation.

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I sometimes think to myself that mangaka/manhwaga must be determined to embarrass their readership with these silly-sounding titles that are like their genre’s equivalent to the shirtless Fabio covers in romance novels.

When this manhwa was recommended to me, I wasn’t enthusiastic because of the title. Call it judging a book by its cover, but although titles like this never fail to elicit a smile from me, I tend to not give them a second glance to explore their contents further. Packaging matters a lot in fiction, some readers pick books solely on the cover, others on the blurb, and some more by the title, a fact publishers know well or they wouldn’t spend millions on all three.

I’m glad I decided to trust the recommendation over the corny title, because My Secretly Hot Husband was one of the most charming manhwas I’ve read in recent years. A mix of the complicated and the simple, the cute and the silly, the melodramatic and a dash of seriousness, and more adventure and engaging characters than I had expected.

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