- #1
This novel is pretty enjoyable! It's essentially your classic isekai "I wanna be a can-do woman!" villainess reincarnation setting, and although the villainess fascination stuff looks good on the cover it doesn't pan out well in the novel itself. That said, a reincarnator becoming a can-do woman is a good enough plot on its own, and translation quality is generally pretty good to support that.That said, I generally dislike the MC's fascination with being a villainess, and the way it's implemented in the novel is pretty spotty at best. The MC's vision of a villainess is a perfect can-do woman who's hated by pretty much everyone. However, she pretty much fails at the "hated by everyone part" - when she says something that breaks the mood or bullies someone, she can't stand the atmosphere and runs away. She has a weird fascination with bullying the heroine despite the heroine not doing anything to her, and generally is a complete pain to many of her loved ones as a consequence. I'm guessing that the author also realized that this bullying was extremely unnatural, because the hurried patch by which they justified the villainess' behavior in the game was just plain BS.Spoiler
The villainess was told to act as a foil for the heroine, i.e. The prospective saintess, by her father, the king, and several other big shots in the country. Doing so would ruin her marriage prospects and social life, and the target isn't even a confirmed saintess, just a prospective one. There's absolutely no rhyme or reason why the villainess would ever have to do such a thing, but I'm guessing this is the author's hurried duck tape to fix the leaking holes from the MC's villainess behavior.
[collapse]Moreover, the romance in this novel is carried out in a very weird way because of all the age gaps. The MC is 5-6 years younger than all the other characters, making the scenarios essentially look like a high school senior courting/getting pushed around by a middle schooler. The male lead excessively touches her (including kissing her in her sleep on the lips) and gives her expensive gifts even when he's 10 years old and she's 5. The MC's father and brother are very protective of her (to the point of nerfing her swordsmanship and education so she doesn't stand out too much), but only in the romance department do they turn a blind eye to the red flags and let this train wreck of an ML court their underage daughter.