A good secret relationship manga is just what you need to add some spice to your life. Secret relationships are messy and complicated, but love can’t be dictated and love can’t be controlled.

You will find yourself rooting for a love that sometimes just cannot be, but in the end, love will always find a way.

Here are some of the best secret romance manga to read:

1. Boku wa Imouto ni koi wo Suru

Twin brother and sister, Yori and Iku Yuki are as close as brother and sister can be, and they have been so since birth. During their early days, Yori would always tell their parents that he would one day marry his sister Iku, but they always just thought this was due to a wild imagination.

However, Yori knew his feelings towards his sister were more than just a sibling bond, and when he turns fifteen, he can’t contain his feelings anymore. He knows he has fallen deeply in love with his sister, which only causes him to feel shame. The two share a bedroom, which makes life incredibly hard for him to hide his feelings.

Due to feeling ashamed, he attempts to distance himself from his sister and starts turning cold towards her. This deeply hurts Iku, and she tries to keep the love and happiness between them. Yori is injured at school during a fight, and a friend does her best to help him. They end up kissing and taking things further, but this doesn’t dim his feelings for his sister.

Their story continues until one day the brother and sister share a kiss, and their world is completely changed forever. Iku does what she must to keep her brother close, even if it means finding a way to pursue a romantic relationship with her twin brother.

2. Liar x Liar

Minato is a twenty-year-old who one day decides to dress up in one of her friend's high school uniforms and go out on the town. While out in the city, she runs into her stepbrother, Tooru, who is only slightly younger than her. He is incredibly cute and is known as a player. Due to his reputation, Minato constantly deals with jealousy from other girls at school.

Somehow, she convinces Tooru that she is another girl, who just looks a lot like his sister. He believes her, and the two start dating. She goes along with the lie at first but soon finds herself stuck in an incredible situation where she is living two lives.

3. Koi Kaze

Two siblings, Koshiro and Nanoka, were separated as children when their parents divorced. The two have a twelve year age gap. Their parents raised them in different areas in Japan and the two weren’t very aware of the other's existence.

When Nanoka turns fifteen, she moves to Tokyo in order to live with her father and her brother, who is now twenty-seven years old. Her brother also happens to work for a company that arranges marriages. They first meet on the train as he picks up the train pass that she had dropped. The two feel a sudden spark of connection.

As fate would have it, they run into each other again in the afternoon at an amusement park and decide to go on a date. On the Ferris wheel, the two confess their romantic desires, even to the point of Koshiro breaking down when he realizes how attracted he is to this young girl. Not long after their date, they meet their father and realize they are siblings.

The story then follows Koshiro’s love for his younger sister, and keeping his feelings secret from society, and how Nanoka grows into womanhood, all while dealing with her romantic feelings for her older brother.

4. 14-sai no Koi

This manga perfectly depicts the complicated age of fourteen. Kanata Tanaka and Kazuki Yoshiwara are two childhood friends who are currently going through an awkward age, but both are seen as mature by their classmates. This reputation forces both of them to avoid acting like ordinary silly teenagers, and instead act older than their age.

The two can only be their true, teenage self around each other, and only put on the mature front when in school around their classmates. Together in private, their relationship is cute and playful, but this soon sets the tone for the pair growing beyond just being friends, and their awkward teen romance is cute and so telling of their age. They need to keep their love secret from others, to keep up their mature image.

5. Domestic na Kanojo

A teacher-student manga where love is not as simple as it should be. Natsuo is a high school student who is hopelessly in love with his popular teacher Hina. At a party one day, he meets a girl Rui, who is moody and gloom. The two end up spending the night together.

Soon after this, his father tells him that Natsuo is to marry a woman who already has two daughters of his own. He is forced to comply and live with his new life, but soon after that both Hina and Rui show up in town, and his life is completely thrown upside down. Can he deal with these three women who he feels strongly for? Love affairs and secret relationship ensue.

6. Marmalade Boy

Life is going great for Miki Koishikawa, that is until her family drops a bombshell on her. After meeting a couple during their holiday in Hawaii, they decide to get divorced and marry each of the other couple. In order to make this work, the two families move in together.

Miki now lives in a home with her new family of four parents, and her new stepbrother, Yui, who is incredibly cute. Miki has to deal with teenage drama with friends and school, who are all having affairs of their own, but her new, strange feelings for Yui. She finds herself stuck in a love triangle with Yui and her long-time crush Ginta. Can she work through her new and odd feelings, and will her relationship with Yui go any further?

She cannot openly date her stepbrother, especially when they live in the same house with all four parents, so navigating through this makes for a great story.

7. Kiss Yori mo Hayaku (Faster Than a Kiss)

Fumino and her brother tragically lose their parents. After their death, they are sent to live with one relative after the next. She grows tired of constantly moving around and desperately wants to settle down with her brother. She decides to quit school and find a job so the two can move into their own place, and she would work to support them both.

However, one day on a park bench, her teacher approaches her. He offers to marry her, and in return will support both her and her brother. At first, she can’t tell if he is joking or not, but they soon embark on a secret relationship, giving her brother the best life possible. Can the two newlyweds form a romantic bond, or is it just a mutually beneficial relationship?

8. School Days

Makoto Ito takes the train to school and back every day. When the second term starts, he notices a beautiful girl on the train named Kotonoha Katsura, and then falls in love with her. However, she is hardly aware of his existence. They aren’t in the same class at school, so they hardly cross paths.

He wants to try and catch her eye, so he asks his friend Sekai Saionji to help him. Little does he know, but Sekai is secretly in love with Makoto. This then leads them on a story of a love triangle where love is kept secret, but feelings soon become too apparent to hide any longer.

9. 15-byou Dake

This manga is also known as I Know I’m Falling. The story follows Hirose Kazumi, who is considered the most beautiful girl at school, but she is not interested in anyone at school. She is in love with her sister’s older boyfriend. When she learns that her sister and he are to be married, she rebels and hooks up with a boy from her class, Tamamura. They soon become friends with benefits, but are in agreement to keep their relationship secret from everyone else, and that they won’t fall in love with each other.

Time passes by and her sister marries her fiancé. Soon after that, Tamamura admits that he is in love with Hirose, and she ends off their relationship. Tamamura transfers to a new school, but this only makes Hirose realize she loves him too. Their secret love now is not so secret anymore, and Hirose needs to decide if he is worth chasing after.

10. Acid Town

Yuki lives in a city where the law is non-existent, and everyone runs free. His brother is in hospital, but he cannot afford to pay his hospital bills. To solve this, Yuki and his friend Tetsu break into the Seidoukai offices to steal money to pay for the bills.

Their plan fails and they find themselves in front of the mob boss Kazutaka Hyodo, who is young for a mob boss. Kazutaka sparks an interest with Yuki and he makes him the ultimate deal – Yuki must visit him in his office once a week and Kazutaka will pay off all of Yuki’s brother's hospital bills. He can’t say no, and so his weekly romantic meetings with the young mob boss begin.

11. Duction Man

Ogi Juugo gave up on the entertainment industry after it was the cause of the death of his family. Sometimes though, fate writes a different story to what we want. He decides to propose to his girlfriend but is heartbroken when she turns him down.

Soon after this, he realizes that his girlfriend works as a model, and he wants to win her back. Fuelled by love, he decides to return to the entertainment industry to get close to her again.

12. Do Not Fight

Ralph and Nora are a married couple, but there is nothing in their real life that would suggest this. The live together in the same house, but sleep in different rooms and hardly interact. He is the CEO of a company, the same company that she works for, but at work, they act like complete strangers.

Obligation and circumstance brought this couple together, but their estranged attitude changes over time. They slowly find themselves falling in love with each other as they find out more about their partner, learning each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and how to actually love.

13. Be My Sweet Darling

Yoo Nan is a high school girl who is the leader of the drama department. She is always cheerful, but this changes when she finds out her crush, Jan Gook Yung, is dating the princess of the school. She ends up drinking her misery away and Jang Gook Yung finds himself stuck taking her home, but in the moment decides to take her to his house instead.

She accidentally knocks him out and undresses him to put him to bed. The next morning, his parents come through to find these two naked in bed and declare that they now need to be married. The two are thrown into a whirlwind of marriage with no history together and find themselves dealing with new feelings and new married life.

14. Cat and Dog

As children, broody actor Seul-Woo and naïve country girl Young-Woo were planned and arranged to be married. Fast forward to the future and the two are estranged. The time arrives for them to be married, and the two estranged friends have to learn to live and survive in their new marriage, dealing with clingy exes, complicated feelings, and betrayals.

Love always prevails, but a clean slate with so much personal baggage does make it difficult for love to conquer all.

Secret relationships are enticing, complicated and so romantic. Love is loud and proud, and keeping it secret can be a monumental task that at times seems impossible!