By Akumi Agitogi and Tsukiho Tsukioka. Released in Japan as “Watashi no Shiawase na Kekkon” by Fujimi L Bunko. Released in North America Yen On. Translated by David Musto.

Every so often, I hot a point in a book where a plot point bounces off me so hard that I just go “NOPE” and throw the book away. Usually it’s pretty easy, as it’s in the first or second volume in a series and I can easily just drop it and never look back. It’s much harder when it’s in a series I really like. I don’t WANT to drop this series. And yeah, the second half of the book is basically everything we wanted to have happen. But man alive. I absolutely did not need the main plotline of this volume, whose entire purpose (and it’s clearly, deliberately on purpose) is to fill this volume with drama even though all the roadblolcks and evil villains have been taken care of. It is there to pile on the pain and suffering once more, and I’m not sure it makes the resolution sweeter for that fact. Basically, there is a scene (it has the words “I hate you” in it) that made me want to jump into the sea. Anyway. Moving on.

It’s finally time. We’re at the wedding, Miyo looks gorgeous, the guests are here, everything is prepared… and the groom is absent. Clearly it’s time for a flashback to show how we got to this point. Miyo is doing her best to get ready for being an actual wife, including facing up to the fact that she will need to be intimate with her husband (when she can’t even say the word “darling” without falling over with a red face) and also trying to brush up on her cooking skills, which are already miles better than her sister-in-law but could use some work. While at a cooking demonstration, she runs into an old classmate from elementary school, who was the other “quiet, shy girl nobody liked” in class, and Miyo gets told a rather depressing story about a sacrificial marriage. She then goes home… and has the scene I mentioned at the start.

The good and bad thing about this series is that it is filled with the supernatural, and there are tons of things that have something evil, monstrous, or twisted as their cause. This is bad because it means that we get everything that happens in this book, which involves curses, evil from the previous generation seemingly trying to rise up and make Kiyoka late for his wedding, and in the end, straight-up murder attempts. The good thing is that it means that we don’t have to have all those horrible romance cliches of “I misheard you and we must now not talk to each other for the next five volumes” miscommunication. It turns out to really be a curse. We also get to see discount bargain-basement Kiyoka and Miyo, who are there as an object lesson in how sometimes you can try to escape a terrible life by entering into an arranged marriage with a stoic, cold man and it goes really badly. I don’t think there’s supposed to be a moral here, like “they should have tried harder”, I think it’s just meant to be “there but for the grace of God go I”.

The good bits of this book were very good. The wedding was fantastic, the ceremony afterwords was heartwarming, the wedding night was moved offscreen but we assume it happened without a lot of blushing and awkwardness, and after that there’s only one minor knife to the heart to deal with and we can get our happily ever after. Except we get an 8th volume soon, so now we get My Happy Married Life. I’ll be reading more. Just… perhaps fewer road cones for the sake of being road cones?

By Akumi Agitogi and Tsukiho Tsukioka. Released in Japan as “Watashi no Shiawase na Kekkon” by Fujimi L Bunko. Released in North America Yen On. Translated by David Musto.

Reading this volume of My Happy Marriage felt so different from all the previous volumes, it was absolutely like a breath of fresh air. Oh, don’t get me wrong, the other volumes are also excellent. But there’s always been this sense of suffocation to the events, a feeling that we’re waiting for the other shoe do drop. Frequently it has dropped, so we’re absolutely correct on that stage. Here, though? It’s only at the start, where Miyo is about to ,make a very dumb decision. Once she’s warded off that, though, everything unfolds exactly the way that it should. She seeks out allies, gets them to help her, researches her powers so she can use them better, makes peace with her mother, and heads off to go rescue her man from the hellish prison that he’s incarcerated in. And this works, because the climax is not “will Usui win or will the good guys prevail”, it’s “will Miyo stop hating herself and let love into her heart?” Spoilers: she does.

Miyo starts off this book by thinking the only way to do things is to just walk up to Usui so that she can get Kiyoka somehow. Fortunately, he’s powerful enough, even in prison, while being tortured, and with gift suppression all around, to create a familiar to stop her and tell her that she should actually go and gather allies to do this properly. The familiar also looks like Kiyoka as an 8-year-old boy, which leads to the cute moments of this book, as she finds him adorable, calls him Kiyo, and even lets him sleep in her bed – something I fear she will regret later when she realizes how familiars work. In any case, she goes to visit the Usuba patriarch and gets the complete story about what happened with Usui and her mother, then she goes to Kiyoka’s parents to ask his father to help her gather gift-users, and she gets Kiyoka’s military crew. Then it’s time to go do a prison break.

As I said, if you’re reading this for the thriller aspect, you may be a bit disappointed. Everything goes almost embarrassingly well, due to a combination of Miyo’s dream powers and Kazushi’s ability to hit people very hard. They literally walk into the prison because, due to everything that’s happened in the last couple books, there aren’t enough soldiers Usui trusts to guard it and also beat off the diversion that’s being fought outside. Even the one bit where things look bad happens exactly as expected – if you’re surprised at what Arata did, I’m so sorry, you must not read very many of these series. But the true climax of the book was Usui trying to talk Miyo into joining him in ruling the world, and Miyo snapping and screaming at him. That was wonderful, I will be so happy if it gets animated. Miyo may also have super powers and come from a terrible family life, but she is using her powers to make herself happy, not impose herself on others. Something Usui doesn’t get.

This isn’t the last book, and the author promises the happy marriage is imminent (though the blurb for the next volume suggests a snag). Fans of this series will love this.

By Akumi Agitogi and Tsukiho Tsukioka. Released in Japan as “Watashi no Shiawase na Kekkon” by Fujimi L Bunko. Released in North America Yen On. Translated by David Musto.

Well, now I just feel bad. One of my go-to jokes about this series is the hideous irony of the title, after all. And in the Afterword the author says they worry about it as well, and asks readers not to constantly harp on it. So that’s half this review needing to be totally rewritten, then. That said, there are signs in this book that we are working our way there, if painfully slowly. Miyo still hates herself so much it’s almost suffocating, but is starting to realize (or be told point blank) that keeping everything to herself can actually be more painful than a possible rejection. She and Kiyoka have a scene where they share a bed (engineered, of course), and it’s as sweet as you’d expect, even though nothing happens, of course. And at the end of the book, we even get an explicit confession of love! Which, um, is actually tragically awful given… (waves vaguely at the cliffhanger)

We pick up where we left off, as the Emperor has been abducted. The Powers that Be make a decision to keep this quiet, which is not that hard given the Emperor is mostly a figurehead now anyway. That said, they really need to protect the prince from the bad guys now. They also need to protect Miyo, so make the decision to do both at the same time and have her staying at the palace, along with Kiyoka, Hazuki, and Yurie. Oh yes, and Arata, her faithful bodyguard. It should be a lot easier now, but there are still ominous rumblings. Miyo’s dreams about her mother and Usui turn out to be something he can talk back to her in, and he doubles down on destroying the world in order to teach it a lesson. Meanwhile, it turns out that the government and military is positively filled with traitors, and that’s bad news for Kiyoka in particular…

All of the My Happy Marriage books have rolled along on a sense of dread, and this one is no exception. We already know from the fourth book that Arata is working for the enemy, so the only question is whether he’s going to be a double agent or a triple agent. Usui is a wonderfully terrible villain, and the thing that pleased me most about the entire book was hearing that his arc should wrap up in Book 6, because I want to be nowhere near him again. The Education Minister’s secretary ends up being like something straight out of a horror movie, and in fact there is a fake climax to the book that reads like the end of a horror film. That said, this is the first book where The Bad Guys Win, and all seems lost. Thankfully, all seeming lost is what finally galvanizes Miyo to get off her ass and be proactive. I’m not sure I approve of her “I will do this by myself so as not to put anyone else in danger” attitude, but it’s otherwise nice to see, and terrific character development.

Still riveting, still fantastically written, still leaves you depressed. Great stuff.