3.5 rounded up because of my ridiculous love for this series. But even without that, this is a good volume - Cyrus is very much into Maria, so he hasn't joined Katarina's harem, Keith receives tacit permission to court Katarina from his adoptive dad, and Katarina takes an orphan under her wing with some excellent advice from Raphael, who finally gets a better role this time. The series stumbled a bit in earlier books, but it always seems to bounce back, which is what's important.
pretty solid volume! a bit more plot focused then the last few have been which i don't mind, especially since that did not stop katarina from experiencing her regularly scheduled maria pining
(i'm gonna be so mad if yamaguchi chooses cowardice and writes katarina/jeord for the endgame. our girl isn't fantasizing about wifing the prince all day every day!!!)
Another great book, but Cyrus is now my favorite character. Katarina needs one friend who isn't trying to hook up with her. Another thing this book made me think about is how lonely the characters in the game must have been, since it sounds like the story from the game doesn't have their friend group. Oh well I suppose I'm just reading to much into a simple story.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Okay, i can officially say that this series is starting to fall into filler territory. the first couple of these were absolutely FANTASTIC but as of recently, it feels that the author is starting to walk in a circle not really moving anything forward in a character progression setting.
What do i mean by that? Well, you see recently in the past couple volumes, a few of Katarina's love interests have started to come forward and tell her how they feel. and not only did she not respond to any of these, but she basically forgot. As in, not only is she completely oblivious to everyone's feelings, she actively forgets when someone says they love her. And the issue is, it's not getting resolved.
I feel like this series should have kept her in the school for a while longer. It seems as if once she graduated school, the author wasn't entirely sure what to do with her and is kind of having her meander around not moving forward with any character development.
The big question on literally every single person's mind in this series is, who will Katarina end up with romantically? and really, the series is not helping you with this question, as, not only is she not developing feelings for really....well..ANYONE but they're adding more characters to the fire who are in love with her. right now she's at
Keith, Jeordo, Sora, Mary, Maria, Sophia, Nicol, Rafael, Alan, and the prince from another country. That puts us at 10 people who all want to be with her romantically. and the author is giving us NO hints on who she's going to pick. I feel as if the author is just dragging this out for as long as they possibly can before finally pairing her with someone, because, by the 10th volume, it's starting to get old.
This volume doesn't even really have a lot of plot going on. She's training her dark magic and goes to an orphanage to help out an orphan. evil lady is there with dark magic. she goes home. the end.
That is essentially the entire volume.
It reads very very fast, and is one of the reasons it's getting a solid 3 from me. I"m starting to get tired of Katarina's non-development and her not having any romantic interests at all.
If i HAD to put my money down on someone, as in, who do i think the author wants to pair her with, i'd probably go with Maria. It seems to be really the only character where she shows real affection for in the whole series, and that's saying something as everyone else is treated like a friend to her.
It's almost like, i'd almost say Katarina is asexual, or at least graysexual, because like... she's never shown any sort of sexual attraction to anyone. and she's supposed to be 18 here. like even in her inner monologues, she never has any "ooohh i'd love to F$%k them" or "i want to kiss x so bad" she's just..very very... not sexual in ANY of her thoughts which is kind of odd? i don't know, you'd just think she'd be interested in SOMEONE romantically at this point considering at least 10 people want her and it's volume 10.
Luckily as of now there's only 12 volumes out. So i can easily read the next two then take a break for a while, waiting for the next volumes to be published.
The joke of stupid Katarina can only run so far, and it's really starting to run on fumes. Just have her defeat dark magic guy and have her pick a romantic partner. at this point, as long as it's not Jeordo, i don't care who it is.
Katarina has to dive ever deeper into the mysteries of Dark magic, which the Ministry hopes to learn more about through her. Unfortunately for them, Katarina was never a very good student of magic . . .
This continues to feel like it's searching for the kind of overarching plot it had in the beginning. Katarina continues to build relationships with new people, while everyone she's already captured is in more or less the same spot we left them at the end of volume 4.
At least the new characters are interesting. Cyrus actually does seem to have an attraction to Maria, and when Katarina discovers his secrets she's put herself in charge of getting the two of them together. Or at least getting him to a point where he can talk to a girl without stiffening up.
On the other hand, the actual plot progress feels like it's so minimal because the author is trying to figure out what to do with it. If you liked this series for the character relationships, that's probably not as much a problem, but the actual villains feel really aimless.
Overall if you've stuck with it this long you might as well give this one a read too. I rate this book Recommended.
Ok, so Duke Claes doesn’t care who Katarina marries as long she loves him. Katarina is to start learning dark magic since she can’t tell anyone the contents of the covenant, only show them. During her lessons with Raphael, she summons a wand but only a tiny bit of darkness. Katarina asks to tag along with Cyrus when he goes to deliver his harvest to an orphanage. This is to help him get closer to Maria. Katarina’s harem follows. And we see Geordo being comfortable with his friends despite not being next to his fiancée. In this book, we get teasing scenes with Alan, Nicol and Keith. We also see how much Maria loves Katarina, aw! Back to the orphanage, there is a troublesome one who keeps running away. In the process of finding him, Cyrus reveals he knows martial arts and Maria asks to learn from him. Katarina revisits the orphanage and manages to help the runaway boy. However Sarah had been targeting him and is disappointed Katarina healed his negative emotions. To get back at Katarina for getting in her way and being rude, Sarah sends Katarina into a void, along with Geordo and Keith. Turns out Katarina may be bad at summoning darkness but she sure can vanish it pretty well.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
We see an actual plot instead of a filler. Also, they toned down her harem and focused on our new star “Liam.” No, he is not a capture target, but a kid.
We also learned about our antagonist, Sarah, yet we do not know who controls her.
Meanwhile, Keith finally told our black belly prince that stalking is a crime. Can we just applaud Keith for saying this to his soon to be brother in law lol
Keith and Gerald are a riot. Prince Alan is too cute for words, Mary is a dom, Sophia is precious, Nicole is too handsome for even kids who needs to pay attention to their studies, Keith has father approval, Maria is learning self defense to protect her crush, Raphael may just be the black horse, and Sora is not good with feelings.
I believe I covered the harem feelings for this novel. Now, I’m back to feeling empty and incomplete until this series end.
I think it’s a crime that I have to wait for the next volume now, especially as things are really picking up plotwise. Yamaguchi’s finally found the rhythm that this story needs and it’s working so well. The characters are really starting to feel more 3-dimensional these days too, instead of just being flat tropes. My hopes are sky-high for the next volume.
Favorite moments: Nicol telling Keith he would make an excellent wife, and Keith telling Jeord that stalking is a crime.
P.S. the acknowledgements mention a Hamefura otome game is being released and I will not know peace until I have a copy of that game in my hands
“Seeing love as pure and intense as that made me think that maybe, after putting doom behind me, I wanted to give romance a shot too.” (129)
The doom isn't behind you yet, gurl. This novel had a lot of incidents with Keith. Nicol is especially funny in this one, and to me he seems queer, so I hope of that's the direction he's headed then yay for him!! Just a theory tho. Overall this book had me laughing out loud, especially that scene with dark fog.
Some of the previous volumes could be repetitive and it made it somewhat annoying to read, this volume really toned down on the repetitive character pov changes, and actually added more insight and depth to the characters. I can't wait to read volume 11!!
Another exciting adventure of Katarina and her friends, as they now venture to an orphanage. But as always, wherever Katarina goes, trouble is never too far behind.
As Katarina learns to control her new powers, darkness itself lurks close by...
This book felt a lot like the author being nice to the fans by giving us moments with ships that haven't come up in a while. I'm not saying that that's a good or bad thing, but looking back I'm kinda surprised that that much plot development could happen amidst and between the adorable shipping moments. I'm really impressed by how much happened in this book!
Sometimes your attempts to save yourself as a reincarnated villainess in the otome game from your past life gets thwarted by sequel material being released after you've died. Katarina has to dive deeper into Dark Magic this volume, and unintentionally hits more game flags from the sequel she hasn't played but her character reappears in. Continues to be a fun read.
“Please tell him that it’s fine to take the hands of those who reach out to you. Tell him that it’s fine to reach out to others for help too. Tell him that there’s always someone who will go through life together with him.”
The way she makes sure Liam is happy and comfortable makes her such a ✨Queen✨ she does not give him sweet words and even with Cyrus, she tries her best to help him and his fears.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.