- #1
AWY is basically a doormat, but not in the "he lets everyone do what they want" kind of way. More like he's just not given a d*mn choice *except* to let everyone do what they want. It starts with his parents who basically demean him for his average grades every chance that they can, derogatorily comparing him to his siblings at every possible opportunity. They also neglect him in his daily life, forcing him to work for his own food and other expenses. It's mentioned later when he's getting a health check up for his pregnancy that he's *malnourished*. His older sister and little brother aren't, just him, so clearly he's working his hands to the bone with little to show for it. At some point later in the story the parents wonder why their son is distancing himself from them, and even blame *him* in some ways for not wanting to interact with them. I feel like the author doesn't want us to hate his parents, but it's just not possible. They're not good to him in any way.And then he gets married to the most psychopathic and controlling old man with a child fetish you can imagine. Sooo..... lets talk about the dynamic between the MC An Wuyang (AWY) and the ML Huo Yunchuan (HYC) because that's what broke this whole novel for me.The age difference between our two leads is twelve years. AWY is 18, a fresh high school graduate, and HYC is 30, a CEO of a large company with a network of adult friends. This is slightly uncomfortable for me personally, but it's fine, 18 is legally an adult in a lot of places. AWY gets his drink drugged and has a mostly consensual one night stand with HYC. This is also fine, it's pretty clear that AWY knows what's going on and wants to relieve himself with HYC. It's when they start getting entangled together after that that things become... disgustingly creepy.After AWY confronts HYC about the baby, sh*t takes a sudden turn into a disgusting fetishization. HYC refuses to let AWY live his life. He forces him to drop out of college, forces him to move into his apartment, forces him to ride in the back seat of his car, forces him to report everything about his location. After AWY meets HYC again he's basically a prisoner, with his contact to the outside world extremely limited. The controlling aspect of his life extends everywhere, including who he's allowed to contact.If that were it, maybe I could give it another star.... But nope. Soon after the "relationship" starts to develop it's clear that it's completely one sided. AWY wants nothing to do with HYC romantically or physically for a long time. He's basically groomed into believing that HYC is best for him because A. his family treated him horribly, and B. making HYC mad at him means he won't have anywhere else to go since he's a pregnant man. Even his doctor examination is done by HYC's friend.Finally, oh finally. The "romance" between our two leads devolves into a weird "child" "old man" play. I'm not just paraphrasing, the author constantly uses terms like "child", "baby", "little angel", "little boy", and more for AWY. For HYC it's "old man", "CEO", "dad" etc. AWY is constantly expressed as naive, young, fresh faced, ignorant, childish and other things. Everything attractive about AWY from HYC's pov is because he's a young kid who's untouched by the world. And these things get *worse* as the story progresses, not better. At one point after their child is born AWY gets lost in the *same building* during a wine tasting event and HYC wants to get him a phone watch.... with a tracking function. At another point HYC takes AWY to an amusement park on a vacation and he *ATTACHES A CHILD RESTRAINT LEASH TO HIM* so that they won't be separated. You can't claim that's just a romantic gesture without coming off as a complete psycho.I thought it'd be a cute mpreg slice-of-life romance, but what I got was creepy older guy g*ooming a young kid.The only saving grace is the Huo family and AWY's younger brother. The mom, dad, grandpa, and even the aunt are pretty awesome to AWY after they find out about him. But that's not enough to redeem this novel in my eyes.