Read a romance novel beyond BL and Raymond is cookie cutter cliche. It’s not mutually exclusive you know. Granted you can like/dislike a plot overall and still dislike character or love a character. Some may find Raymond sympathetic others don’t because he’s am emotionally stunted grown man responsible for himself.
The plot of every romance novel I did''t bother with: boy meets girl, boy compramises/has misunderstanding with girl, boy loses girl, boy rescues/helps girl in some way, boy wins girl back. That's not quite what's happening here, but whatever. (Are there novels similar to this, I'm sure there are, but for bl, this is quite wonderful) As for his emotions, I think the author has made him beautifully fleshed out, especially since there are not hundreds of words to do it with.
I see so many people hating on Raymond. It's a shame that they can't appreciate how good his character is because they are expecting the typical cliche story.