The Sweet Stepmother and Her Cute Cubs Chapter 2 part1 Discussion

Edited cause I apparently typed like a blind monkey and needed to fix typos.

A novel that is all about a family of perfect people. Can't even call them Gary/Mary Sues as there isn't anything to go against them or even "challenge" them. It's slice of life but it quickly becomes super-boring.

The MC transmigrated into the body of an incredibly intelligent farmer's daughter. She was formerly an architect but the new body was the top graduate of High School so the MC ends up doubly smart. She's also soft and kind-hearted but with a few moments of badass. However, everything she does ends up working insanely well for her or her family.

Spoiler

Starting with her marriage to the ML and ending with being a top business woman in Beijing by the end of the novel. She even has dragon-phoenix twins (boy and girl) which was in neither her family or the ML's family (in fact, it was mentioned in her village that they could only remember of one case of twins and that was it).

Heck, even her step-kids end up being geniuses who are only made smarter by her teaching methods (nevermind the fact that they were beaten and starved for roughly a year by the woman who was supposed to be caring for them so should have had some deficiencies). These kids are so smart that they skip grades, write a novel and become serialized in a magazine/newspaper for nearly a decade.

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The ML is a military doctor who chose to remarry after his wife's death. Initially, he didn't think that was necessary as he naively believed that others would help him with his kids. He doesn't really have much of a personality beyond doting on his wife. While he does feature in the story, he left less of an impression on me than the kids did and I found it hard to remember any major scenes with him after reading.

Spoiler

He honestly felt like just a plot device for the MCs story.

Need a way out of the village? Marry him.

Need to travel? He knows a guy with a car.

Need money to buy a courtyard? His family buried gold.

I understand that the title is clearly "Sweet Stepmother and her Cute Cubs" but I figured that the father/husband would at least have some impact in the story. He just doesn't.

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The kids are cute at first but then they start showing off their intelligence. And then we get reminded of how smart they are. The author could not go more than 10 chapters without mentioning how smart and gifted these kids are. Even the adopted nephew regularly thinks about how he shouldn't feel bad about not being at the same level of genius as the oldest kid.

There are also no real issues to overcome. If something bad happens, it is often cleared up in the same chapter it was mentioned in or within a few chapters.

Spoiler

For example, the MC's dissagreement with a teacher who gets removed from her position within a few chapters of the MC deciding she wasn't good enough to teach the kids.

Or when someone reported the family for living lavishly as others could smell the food the MC was cooking. It was explained away that they needed healthier food because the kids had been starved and that apparently made things all okay.

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There are also a lot of plot points that exist for breif moments of drama before fading off into oblivion. None of these things truly impacted the characters other than "Oh. Bad thing happened... Anyway."

Spoiler

We never read about the woman who ab*sed the two sons of the ML after the leads take them away. It's mentioned that she will go to prison or something to that effect and then it's forgotten about completely.

The cousin of the cub's bio-mom gets scolded a few times and then vanishes completely from the story. The cousin's mother tries to start something but gets shut down the two times and then never shows up again.

Same with the adopted nephew's not-mom. The author drops the bombshell that he isn't her biological son (which had very hamfisted hints at earlier in the story) and then she's gone completely. No one brings up that she had been taking the alimony that was meant to care for the kid while she had abandoned him with his adopted grandmother. Even though the higher ups were apparently very aware that the kid was someone else's. No one steps in about it.

No one investigates the clear mu*der of the grandmother of the adopted nephew either.

Also no real explation on why an architect would be so good to cook (it even states she had a helper for most of this).

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Overall, it becomes a very tedious read. The first part is good but then we just get subjected to hearing how the kids are absolutely perfect and good at everything. Well, except for the baby girl who is almost normal compared to the boys, just smarter than average but no where near a genius. Just treated like a little princess (the extra story about her and her eventual partner was kind of weird though).

Spoiler

Yeah, I know the author had planned on hooking her up with the adopted nephew for a long time but sorry, it was creepy when the author had the boy think about how they were fated because even her crying as a baby always seemed to affect him differently (eww). Only good thing was that their feelings were written as platonic until she came of age and only then did they start to think of the other person as a potential partner. And only because the baby girl did not like the idea of him being nice to another person (possessive much?).

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Definitely not a recommended read but it's alright if you want a snapshot of slice of life with zero complications.