Yi Yi Lan Xi has become one of my favorite C-novel writers. This is her third novel that I am reading and it is very good. And it's her third novel that is so lengthy, that I was unable to complete it. Each of her novels starts well and holds well for hundreds of chapters and then moves into arcs and topics that are simply too heavy for my taste.
As usual, it is about transmigration into the body of an unwilling and unwanted bride, in this case, a girl in love with and engaged to someone else, who was forced to marry a man who saved her from drowning, touched her body in the process and therefore had to marry her.
And then a story of living in a large peasant family, where three already financially separated brothers with their large families of married and unmarried sons and grandkids share the same courtyard/homestead, as a wife of the third son of the eldest brother begins. Because the bride is a concubine's daughter of a wealthy magistrate who marries into a poor village family, she is envied by the villagers as being wealthy and having a status, her in-laws are being envied by their relatives from the same courtyard, they want to snatch a share of her (meager) dowry, to dominate the young bride, to break her, to push her to the bottom of the family hierarchy, etc.
This story is magical in more ways than one. A modern girl transmigrated into an ancient China-like world with certain powers to sense and to affect plants, her own space backed up by a powerful system, ability to cultivate her powers and upgrade the space, etc. Most importantly, she transmigrated into a family with a great mother-in-law, a great husband and his wonderful siblings and that is simply precious.
Spoiler
Having read half of it I had to drop it when the FL and the ML were about to move from their village to the capital for the ML to study and pass the imperial examination of the highest level. The FL's scumbag father got pissed off with the pair and sent a letter to his family in the capital to make their life difficult. I was so not interested in another batch of squabbles, rows and backstabbing by the relatives of their relatives! And crazy gals going after the ML, obstinately pursuing him, a married man. Enough is enough.
Probably because the author was seeking higher ratings, she cranked up the degree of nastiness in the behavior of the FL's relatives and reduced the magic and sweetness in the novel to the point that I lost interest in reading it. Reading about extreme forms of ab*ses of women is not a pleasant pastime. That and the fact that after a year and a half of marriage, 1000 chapters into the story, there was zero progress in relationship between the FL and the ML. All this time they shared a bed like two strangers, never shared a kiss or a hug or had feelings other than appreciation of each other as suitable spouses for each other. These folks are too lukewarm, 👎👎👎 They are great as family members to their family, as a brother, a sister-in-law, as a daughter in law, etc., but they are not a romantic or a loving couple. This novel pays zero attention to such matters and neither of them is passionate.
(They suddenly consummated their marriage in ch1022 and then went back to their usual relationship style.)
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