- #1
NOT A ROMANCE.I got curious because I'm over half way through the book and the protagonist is still only 7 years old and there's no sign at all of a male lead so skimmed the extras and couldn't find the name of the male lead, just MC, her daughter, and her adoptive family. Presumably he exists because a daughter but he definitely doesn't have much focus on him. Instead it seems to remain themed on the extended family. Also the author decided to completely swap genres starting this chapter from a more historical, farming, minor fantasy elements (rebirth, magical space, etc) story to a much higher fantasy story with exercising ghosts and dealing with immortals. It's got a lot of whiplash.Overall it's not a bad novel, it just does the WORST job of presenting itself. It's like saying I want to eat pancakes so your friend takes you to a Korean restaurant. Yes the seafood pancake is delicious, but it has almost nothing in common with a syrup and butter covered American breakfast food other than rough shape.To this point the novel does a good job building up challenges and having the protagonist overcome them. It keeps track well of the large number of side characters and the complex relationships and connections. There's plenty of satisfying face slapping karma and reasonable enough reasons for villains to keep appearing so it's not just a new green tea bit*h every ten chapters. It's nothing super gripping edge of your seat, but it's reliably fun and satisfying. Except you know when you were promised romance since it's under the romance tag and there's barely even any side character romance. Mostly though I blame this on people who automatically presume anything with a female protagonist must be a romance story.I may stick with this a bit longer to see how it holds up now that the genre swapped but not sure.
