Is As the Heart Leads Worth Reading? Review & Where to Read

Quick facts
Format	Webtoon (josei), 59 chapters
Run	2024–present · ongoing
Community score	AniList 7.8 · MangaUpdates 7.9
Content	Mild fantasy violence, mentions of suicide (pre-story backstory)
Where to read	Tapas — official

Overview

Yijae Kang has bad luck stacked on bad luck: she's an orphan, she can see ghosts, and she can't go near water. Then she dies and wakes up as Hailey Duncan, a noblewoman who took her own life rather than marry King Rodrick of Kaien, a man with a court's worth of evil spirits clinging to him. Yijae doesn't get a say in the marriage, but she does get a use for her one useful curse: she can see and exorcise the spirits weighing Rodrick down, and the more time they spend on that work together, the more it starts to look like something else.

That's the whole engine of As the Heart Leads, and to its credit, it doesn't pretend to be more than that. This isn't a political fantasy or a mystery with a ghost gimmick bolted on — it's a romance that uses the supernatural as a reason to keep its two leads in a room together, and it leans into that instead of fighting it.

What it does well

The romance itself is the reason to read this. Yijae and Rodrick don't fall into each other's arms because the plot needs them to — they build trust in small increments, through shared meals, checked-in-on bad nights, and Rodrick actually noticing when Yijae is exhausted from doing the emotional labor of pulling spirits off him. It's a low-drama kind of romance, more about two guarded people slowly letting go of their guard than about big declarations, and it's genuinely sweet when it lands.

The art carries a lot of that weight. Close-up expression work does most of the heavy lifting in quieter scenes, and the character designs are clean enough that even a wordless panel of a shared glance reads clearly. For a webtoon built around two people's faces more than action or spectacle, that's exactly the skill it needed.

The exorcism premise, to its credit, stays a premise rather than ballooning into a bigger plot the story isn't built to handle. It gives Yijae a reason to be useful and Rodrick a reason to be vulnerable, and it doesn't overstay its welcome as a device.

Where it falls short

The cost of keeping the plot small is that there often isn't much plot at all. Long stretches of the story are just Yijae dealing with another spirit attached to Rodrick, and until the story pushes past that early structure, it can feel like it's circling the same idea rather than building on it. Readers looking for the exorcism angle to escalate into real stakes — political consequences, a larger threat, anything beyond the couple's own relationship — are likely to come away wanting more than the story is set up to deliver.

The supporting cast doesn't help fill that gap. Most side characters exist to react to the central romance rather than pursue anything of their own, so the world around Yijae and Rodrick feels thinner than it should for a story set at court.

The dialogue also wobbles in its more serious moments. Scenes meant to hit hard emotionally sometimes read stiffly, which can undercut a beat the art and pacing had otherwise earned.

Verdict

As the Heart Leads knows exactly what kind of romance it wants to be, and for the readers who want that specific thing — patient, low-drama, two people slowly choosing each other — it delivers. Just don't go in expecting the ghosts to matter much beyond giving the leads an excuse to be in the same room.