1. Abused girl is reborn into her 6-year old body, immediately before her stepmom sells her into slavery. She then plots to t18 Jan 2022 DNF, Skimmed.
1. Abused girl is reborn into her 6-year old body, immediately before her stepmom sells her into slavery. She then plots to thwart the stepmom's plans and takes bloody revenge on the people who wronged her. She meets an prince who immediately gets interested in her. There are politics and plots.
2. I'm honestly a little glad to realize I've run out of steam re: rebirth/revenge stories? I've reached a point where the plot alone is not enough to keep me interested. This gives me hope about getting more control of my id.
3. Anyway, this was just- really unspectacular. The best part about it is the title. All the events just drag along in an uninteresting train of plots from really dumb antagonists that are easily countered by the protagonists. It's also really slow-paced, and that does not help.
4. The protagonists meet when the FL is 6 and the ML is 15, and it's a little eyebrow-raising even with how the FL is effectively older than the ML at that point. Even if there are no immediate romantic feelings involved. Maybe it's just my dissatisfaction with the rest of the story making me view this in a negative light.
5. Some of the bits I read are also- how do we put it, needlessly cruel? This is a very protagonist-centric morality kinda story. Not something where the protagonist knows they are being cruel and fully embraces it like The Rebirth of the Malicious Empress of Military Lineage, but where the narrative treats all forms of cruelty in a very matter of fact manner. Again, this is very definitely informed by me being too bored when reading the book. Which in turn made me pay too much attention to things which I found even slightly interesting. ...more
1. Professional chef transmigrates to body of rich divorcee obsessed with ex-husband. She decides she wants none of that shit and starts to18 Jan 2022
1. Professional chef transmigrates to body of rich divorcee obsessed with ex-husband. She decides she wants none of that shit and starts to get attached to her kids instead. The kids, who were originally supposed to be pitiable antagonists in the story, decide to cozy up to their newly improved mom. Her cooking skills also attract the foodie uncle of the future male lead. Slice of life shenanigans ensue.
2. This is not a plot-heavy story, and what little plot there is gets overshadowed by all the non-plot scenes featuring the characters. This is because the characters are very sitcom-like; deeply chaotic and funny with genuinely interesting connections with each other. This makes the entertainment-circle finance stuff feel both out of place and boring.
3. The romance is really cute. It's a slow burning relationship, made all the more slower by both the ML and FL being really, really inept at both identifying and conveying romantic interest. It's glorious. They are both so smart and yet so deeply dumb. Truly a match made in heaven. I love them.
4. The supporting characters are all wonderful. The FL's mom is a domineering delight and her relationship with her husband is both sweet and funny. The ML and his nephew are a two person comedy act. The FL's kids are both adorable and funny. Meng Yuran's food-mooching friends are great too. It's just- all so sweet a wholesome. Sigh.
5. The prose is really funny too. Often very matter-of-fact and tongue-in-cheek, finding humor in fairly normal character interactions and reactions. I just really love in when the narrative manages to set the stage like a sitcom. Little things like the repeated comments about how "Meng Yuran was not happy but his face was always like that so nobody noticed it", Meng Shanshan's foolishness (Which is mostly her tendency to abandon any common sense the moment food enters into the picture. Same girl, me too.), the repeated comments about who the real head of the family is and how everyone behaves in order to please her, the never-ending rivalry between the boys even to the point where they shoot themselves in the foot to one-up the other, Lu Xun's ongoing distaste for expressionless faces (which he passes on to Meng Shanshan), and the running gag of Lu Xun being just terrible at romance because he's too focused on food. Honestly, him and Meng Shanshan were born to be dad and daughter.
6. All of these tiny character details may not have been very important (or important at ALL) plotwise but they went a long way into making me feel attached to the characters. They are all hilarious messes. I love them all.
7. So anyway, I had fun is what I'm saying. Don't come here if you want plot or drama or emotions. But I had so much fun with the fluff and the comedy....more
18 Jan 2022 aka Survive as the Hero's Wife C01-118, Complete.
1. Transmigrated girl is a shrewish child-bride married to the original Male Lead, and was 18 Jan 2022 aka Survive as the Hero's Wife C01-118, Complete.
1. Transmigrated girl is a shrewish child-bride married to the original Male Lead, and was eventually executed by the ML later in the story. She gets closer to the ML in an effort to save her life. It works a little too well.
2. This is a really cute romance. The ML is adorable. An idiot in the ways of love, but adorable. His pathetically incompetent advances are so funny it's cute. The FL agrees with me on this, as she should. They are a very comfortable, cozy couple. Not much drama here- just people supporting and believing in each other, and the FL going out of the way to IMMEDIATELY clear the misunderstandings our low EQ ML stumbles into. I ship them.
3. The supporting characters are also wonderful! I fell in love with Gracie the same time the FL did. Noah is a sweetheart. I actually really liked the redheaded evil siblings and their relationship. The ML's clown posse is pretty fun too. Just- a lot of pretty fun characters with comprehensible (and sometimes compelling) motivations. I liked that.
4. I do think the story lost a lot of momentum once the romance issues were resolved, mostly because the politics plot didn't invoke the same level of emotional investment from me. But still, it was definitely not non-enjoyable. Weird placement of amnesia, though....more
1. Ice Planet Sexy Blue Demonic Alien is magically bonded to stranded human woman, panics, and abducts newly symbiote-infused lady to a mat14 Jan 2022
1. Ice Planet Sexy Blue Demonic Alien is magically bonded to stranded human woman, panics, and abducts newly symbiote-infused lady to a mating cave in hopes of winning her over. Yeah, I see the expression you're making right now and I get it. But it can't be helped. Sometimes the id demands something and will not shut up till it gets the goods.
2. I was actually looking forward to this one. At the end of book one, we had all the symbiote infections and two very cranky people who were clearly and unwillingly yoked together by the symbiote's baby making ways. The first book was also fairly okay about exploring the weirdness and the consent issues involved in the situation. Sadly, this book took away most of what made the first book work, and replaced it with a lot of random new stuff that did not.
3. Look, I get that the symbiote makes sex way more fun than it otherwise would be and results in tiny half-alien babies and whatnot but we already know that. This has been established. WHAT ELSE DOES IT DO is what I want to know. But the book is very, very uninterested in answering that, preferring to resort to more sex scenes instead.
4. The book tries some rudimentary social worldbuilding (we're done with the ecological stuff at this point I guess) but... hmm. I'm not sure how well it succeeded. I'm not sure how much sense it makes for a tiny colony obsessed with reproduction and with only a medium-level resource scarcity problem to abandon one of their own. I appreciate the book (view spoiler)[pointing out how this is a deterrent for similar future crimes, which ngl sounds like a very big problem (hide spoiler)] but it may have come a little too late as a plot point?
5. I liked Liz in the first book because she was a bitch and I love my bitches. But I think she lost an opportunity for better characterization in this one. The survival is not as much of a problem in this book, so the personality really needs to be something more than "snarky, independent woman with convenient archery skills." Hell, I would have taken even that if it had been consistent. But Liz goes from "OH HELL NO FUCK YOU ICE PLANT GET AWAY FROM MY VAGINA" to "I am okay with this actually babies and blue dicks here I come" ridiculously fast. It makes all the speeches she gave the ML (sorry man, I forgot your name) about agency and choice and whatnot ring a little hollow. Not because she made a choice I think is questionable (so did Georgie, from the first book) but because it was made out of a weird priority shift change that came from nowhere.
6. Well maybe not nowhere. Maybe it was because of the SF Fantasy magic dick. Whatever. I'm still not on board the happy with sex means happy with babies pipeline.
7. I'm also a little less than happy about how the whole exile thing was handled? It was still the most interesting part of the book. But. In addition to the population thing from Point #4, there seem to be no women (out of 11) who are internally screaming at this whole situation? Look if I was stuck somewhere without entertainment and where I was obligated to give birth after a three-year pregnancy you best believe there are going to be some injuries. I want you to be happy, ladies, but your lack of trauma is unsettling.
8. My favorite bit was the kidnapping. I gave a whole half star for the kidnapping + shit-stirring combo. See? I KNEW I'd like Liz if the whole baby making blue dick wasn't in the picture.
9. Anyway, I didn't dislike it and I'll probably pick up one of the other books in the series at some point to see if themes I actually want explored will be explored. But for now, I'm gonna head out....more
1. A group of human women are abducted by aliens and then stranded on an ice planet. One of the women head out from the crashed shi14 Jan 2022 CW: Rape
1. A group of human women are abducted by aliens and then stranded on an ice planet. One of the women head out from the crashed ship to look for help, and meets up with a hot blue demon man. First encounter survival romance ensues. There's also some more stuff about fated (for a given value of fated) romance partners, more horny blue men looking for mates, and a little bit of worldbuilding.
2. On many levels, I enjoyed this book. I am a sad sorry simp for any sort of survival story, and this was basically one of those till about the halfway mark, arguably even after that. I was also fine with the romance, which somehow managed to be mostly cute even with all the weird consent issues and it hitting up on many of my squick factors. (view spoiler)[I mean, the ladies are basically baby machines for the aliens and while circumstances make that easier to bear, it's still FAR from ideal. (hide spoiler)] I suppose it helped that the ML (I have already forgotten his name alas) was genuinely nice and helpful at all points, despite the amount of power he had over the FL throughout the story. So like- not ideal, but I get it.
3. There was actually very little worldbuilding, but I did like what we got. The (view spoiler)[Spaceship ex Machina (hide spoiler)] was a little much and jolted me out of the narrative a bit, but I can see how it might have been necessary to convince the humans to go ahead with the symbiote plan.
4. There was a lot of sex though. At least 30% of the book is sex. Which you know, gets a little boring if I'm not fully invested in the characters and their relationship. Which I wasn't, in this case. They do seem like fairly well-written sex scenes, at least? Keep in mind this is coming from someone who mostly skips the things and therefore has no frame of reference, though.
5. I actually picked this book up because some of the reviews went on about how funny it was. Which it really wasn't. It wasn't gloomy, but I don't really think I cracked more than a smile at any point. It was also way more brutal than I expected. Things mellow down a bit after they crash into the ice planet but the original abductors were, shall we say, not nice people.
6. To conclude, I voluntarily picked up a book titled "Ice Planet Barbarians" and ended up having a pretty good time so I'm going to count this one as a win. ...more
1. Regency-era romance/self-discovery with recently discovered miniature dragons currently used as pets. (view spoiler)[Protago01 Jan 2022 Skimmed-ish.
1. Regency-era romance/self-discovery with recently discovered miniature dragons currently used as pets. (view spoiler)[Protagonist runs away from abusive caretaker uncle's family, runs into hero in a meet cute and realizes her stolen dragon has magical powers. She then finds herself masquerading as a woman of influence back at her uncles', falling in love with a fortune hunter while dealing with her comically spoiled cousin, a blackmailing maid, and a green tea bitch. (hide spoiler)]
2. My favourite part about this whole story was the aunt. The aunt gets (view spoiler)[hit with a wish which makes her say everything that comes to her mind (hide spoiler)] and it is both really funny and actually thought provoking. You know, in a social silences kinda way. Add that to her implied past relationships (Elinor thinking about her aunt's gifts and letters, the aunt rekindling her relationship with her old friend/implied lover) and the Aunt is by far the most interesting person in this book. I would have liked a story centered on her escaping the physical and mental shackles imposed on her by her entitled family a lot more that this one.
3. Which is not to say it was bad. There was just not enough here that wasn't very romance-typical. The romance protags fall in love with each other very fast while knowing very little about each other. Most of the screentime they share is spent on (view spoiler)[both/one of them not realizing the other knows about the magical illusion (hide spoiler)] so there is very little chance for actual romantic buildup. This is a very forgettable couple is what I'm saying.
4. I have mixed feelings about the whole blackmailing maid subplot. On the one hand, regency servants blackmailing their masters! On the other hand, the portrayal of the maid as being someone not just desperate but cheerfully immoral is kinda questionable. Especially in contrast to Elinor's unshakeable morals, which frankly come across as hypocritical sometimes. I mean, girl. (view spoiler)[You're committing identity fraud (out of desperation) and now you balk at framing someone for something they DID do and continues to do (also out of desperation) because it makes you "as bad as them"? (hide spoiler)] Sally is right. Your tolerance for immorality depends almost entirely on who the victim is, and hanging a lampshade on that doesn't really make things better.
5. I have read enough romance to know that the rattled dragon academic is going to go to Wales where he is going to meet Elinor's beautiful, romantic sister and learn to accept the possibilities of magic and fairy tales. This ain't my first rodeo.
6. Anyway, I know I whined a lot but this was actually a pretty fun book? I wish we had focused less on some things (the bitchy antagonists, the does (s)he love mes) and more on others (dragon mythology! dragon history! relationship building, and the Aunt). But I can see why the author made the choices they did for the story they were trying to tell, so eh. Good enough....more
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