Miyo is the first daughter of a noble (I think) whose first wife passed away. Her father remarried, and Miyo's stepmother and half-sister treat her cruelly. The situation is exacerbated by Kaya's having magic powers, while Miyo does not. Kaya ends up betrothed to a friend of the family who was also Miyo's only male friend, while Miyo is affianced to Kudo, a noble who has serially broken off his engagements. Does gentle, cowering Miyo stand a chance, or will she be out on the street in a few days, having been all but disinherited on her engagement?
Miyo is a passive, downbeat character. I've come across this kind of character a number of times in fantasy manga for girls. From the moment she enters Kudo's household, Miyo's afraid to say or do anything on her own behalf. Much of her timidity is due to her abusive upbringing and her fear of being kicked out of Kudo's household, and I understand that. But there's just not much interesting about her. She's a little unusual in not being a bookworm, and in fact being only partially literate, but that isn't characterization.
Don't get me wrong! Active, upbeat characters are a dime a dozen, particularly in manga and anime, and I think a more passive, or even housebound character type could work. But the manga I've read with this type of MC/heroine didn't manage to do so. In all three cases that I thought of*, our heroine makes no effort to expand her horizons beyond the walls of her home (whether by meeting new people or seeing new places). She sits around the house waiting for her hot guy to come around: whether in a literal sense of being in her presence, or emotionally. It's depressingly like contemporary shut-in life and what's more, it's boring.
* Fiancée of the Wizard, Savior's Book Café Story in Another World, and this one
Miyo's mother was from the secretive Usuba clan who have powers of manipulating emotions, but she has no powers of her own. An easy way to create tension here would be for Kudo to be unaware that she isn't a magical girl, and distrust his growing feelings for her. She, in her turn, would prove her loyalty and affection for him in various ways, and eventually convince him her love for him is real.
What we have instead is, well, a lot of nothing. We have no reason to believe that Miyo is in any real danger of being thrown out, so the stakes feel shallow or false. Story-wise, we've got a shopping date and... zzz. Kudo has a magical scene at the end of this volume, but I'm not particularly interested in reading another story where the heroine is stuck at home all day (doing housework, even, in this case), and the hero is out in the world doing heroic stuff.
The art is prettier than I typically see in manga adaptations, with a couple of striking images that made me linger on the page to appreciate them. There's a bonus short story by the light novel's author at the end of the book that made a better impression on me than the main part of the book did--though through its theme more than its events--so maybe I'll give the light novel a try and see if it manages to overcome my rather tepid response to this manga by having similar gentle insights.
Another one from my partner's library, and one that I was glad to not have spent anything to read. :D