By Ajigozen and Yura Chujo. Released in Japan as “Hitojichi Hime ga, Shōsoku wo Tatta. Kuro Ōkami no Kishi wa Rinkoku no Shiitagerareta Hime wo Zenryoku de Aishimasu” by DRE Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Emily Hemphill.
It’s always awkward when a book doesn’t really do anything wrong but leaves me a bit cold. Most of this second and final volume is fine. There are a few action scenes, which are exciting. The lead guy is perfectly fine, vacillating between stolid handsome hunk and soppy “I’m so in love with my wife” annoyance. There’s a few plot twists near the end that work pretty well, and the evil nobles are cartoonishly evil without feeling like they also kill babies and kick puppies. And yet, I think I came away from this book shrugging. In the end, I think it comes down to having the wrong narrator. This is Sonia/Nia’s story, but except for one or two POV scenes, mostly in the first book, we rarely see inside her head, instead spending all our time with husband Ark. I appreciate that not all shoujo romances have to have a woman’s POV, but this story would have worked better with it.
After getting unofficially married at the end of the last book, Ark and Nia move to their new domain, which as it turns out is dealing with a nasty outbreak of bandits… which are fairly obviously being sent by the second prince of Sylvario, Nia’s brother. Fortunately, when she was Sonia, the princess formed a bond with the denizens of the towns, which helps them win everyone over fairly quickly. The medicine also helps. Ark is a distant third. Once it’s determined that the foreign prince is behind this, it’s decided to bait him into a trap and capture him, which works so well that everyone wonders if they’re in some sort of Reverse Uno situation, but no, the prince really is that stupid. That said, he’s not the only antagonist…
Towards the end of the book we get several genre shifts to go with the “disgraced noble” that we’ve been dealing with all along. There were hints of a “secret saint” plot, and they turn out to be correct, and we also get a villainess plotline that reminds me far too much of the recent arc of Bakarina – the third princess reads very much like the original evil Katarina Claes, and her fate is likely going to be much the same. (Isekai’d otome game villainesses seem to do very badly in this world, in fact, as she’s not even the first one.) I would argue that the identity of a secret royal who can end up being a potential love interest for Prince Alphonse is perhaps one twist too far, and mostly serves as a way to allow our main couple to actually get it on without getting a cold stare of shame. But for the most part they work well. They just didn’t excite me.
If this was ongoing, I likely wouldn’t get more of it. Fortunately, we’re done here. This was good, but in the end, I wish I’d read it from the other POV.