- #1
In a landscape filled with generic harem comedy tropes masquerading as web novels, Pretending to have a Girlfriend manages to stand above the rest as a surprisingly relatable and realistic take on what would happen if a normal guy actually went through several years of the same broken cliches with no romance development in sight. In fact I couldn't believe it when I read the first 25 chapters and realized this was supposed to be a 3.8/5 star web novel with less than 800 readers, people are seriously sleeping on this one.Now the summary doesn't actually provide much detail, but basically the MC is the leader of an adventurer party who realizes how he let the three other girls in his party take his life from him and decides to use his brother's advice of pretending to have a girlfriend for his own sanity and well-being. Overall this is a very character focused novel so the characters will either make or break the novel for most people. While the setting is pretty generic, I really enjoyed the way both Starchis (MC) and Stion (MC's brother) were handled, they got a lot of depth and I liked seeing their growth over the course of the novel.If you're like me and look at negative reviews to see what flaws this might have, keep in mind that most negative reviews are by people who clearly haven't read more than 20 chapters of the actual story.One of the big criticisms comes from the fact that people say Starchis (MC) is a complete beta that just lets his party members do what they want with him. This misses the point of the first 15 chapters. He is clearly trying to fix the shitty situation he's ended up in, which is why he went to his brother to ask for help in the first place. Yes he starts out as a doormat, but he grows a backbone early on and the rest of the series is spent following the improved MC.The other criticism is that people say the other party members are really bad and they don't get the karma they deserve. To this I'd say they aren't just bad, they're completely unlikable psychopaths. The key difference is that critics don't realize readers are supposed to despise them. It's because they are this bad that the payoff for the next 100 chapters is so satisfying. One thing I can guarantee about this webnovel is the party members get what they deserve.All in all, if you've been as jaded as I have by trope filled stories that are not only generic, but refuse to treat any hard hitting topics with the seriousness they deserve, you'll enjoy reading this. It's not the best reading experience ever nor did it change my life, but it also didn't need to do that. I came here to get an enjoyable well written story, and that's what I got.