By Rinrin Yuki and Suzaku. Released in Japan as “Olivia Maseki Houshokuten e Youkoso: Ka to Mise wo Oida Sareta no de, Outou ni Mise wo Kamaetara, Naze ka Moto Konyakusha to Gimai no Kekkonshiki ni Dero to Iwaremashita” by Mag Garden Novels. Released in North America by Cross Infinite World. Translated by Jordan Taylor.

It’s always hard, when you’re dealing with light novel series that have been adapted from webnovels, to tell whether a series is finished, on hiatus due to the author’s life getting in the way, dropped as the author started to write something else and got bored, or cancelled by the publisher. This seems to be mostly the third version: the author is certainly writing plenty of other series, while the webnovel of this series ends with the events of the second book (though confusingly the webnovel is split into three books) and various short stories. I wasn’t able to find the contents of this volume at the Narou site. And the author definitely says the series is finished in the afterword. As for why I’m filled with doubt? It resolves nothing. Not even an engagement or wedding. Just “meh”.

We open with a relatively content Olivia dividing hwer time between her successful jewelry shop in the capital and her family home and business a ways in the country. However, Olivia’s Magic Jewelers relies on Olivia’s anxiety as a plot mover, so we can’t have that. As a result, she’s asked to become a temporary researcher for the Magic Institute, which had been researching how to fly airships but recently had a Hindenburg-esque disaster, albeit with no loss of life, so they’re searching for an alternative. As Olivia has been in a creative rut recently owing to her desperate attempts to be as good as her genius father, she agrees, and finds herself paired off with easygoing Daisy and anxious but nice guy Robin. Despite the odd sneering from the obligatory noble girl, she’s doing well, and her magic powers seem to be fantastic – though not at her father’s level. So… what’s the catch?

I’m grumpy because this book doesn’t resolve anything, but I’m also grumpy as it makes use of one of my least favorite romantic plotlines, the “who are you going to believe, your loving boyfriend or the guy you work with who’s telling you your loving boyfriend is an elitist jerk?”. Now, this does make some sense in context – class remains built into this series, which is probably why Olivia and Elliot are still just going out here, and her “daughter of a baron, i.e. basically a commoner” status makes her susceptible to this sort of thing. And she’s always been a sad sack because of her abusive upbringing after her father died. Still: EURGH. The other issue is that the series seems to be shifting away from its premise, trying to turn Olivia into a genius scientist/inventor sort, and while there’s part of that in the previous two books, I miss the jewelry shop. I’m glad she said no. I did, however, really like Daisy, her co-worker and friend in the Institute, who is exactly the sort of girl to leap out of a plane to test if the magic “don’t crash” things work.

If you’ve read the first two books and want to know what happens, you can read this. But it’s not essential, and lacks the feel of a final volume. Alas.

By Rinrin Yuki and Suzaku. Released in Japan as “Olivia Maseki Houshokuten e Youkoso: Ka to Mise wo Oida Sareta no de, Outou ni Mise wo Kamaetara, Naze ka Moto Konyakusha to Gimai no Kekkonshiki ni Dero to Iwaremashita” by Mag Garden Novels. Released in North America by Cross Infinite World. Translated by Jordan Taylor.

I enjoyed this a great deal more than I did the first volume, though I do feel a bit guilty about that, as the main reason I enjoyed it was I kept waiting for Olivia to finally break down. We already knew she was an earnest young woman with a low opinion of herself, and we saw, at the start of the first book, her treatment at the hands of her abusive adopted father, cheating fiance, and terrible stepsister. But she ran away to the capital, made a name for herself, has a shop, and also has the most attractive man in the city in love with her, though she has not quite cottoned on to that last one. That means that this book, where she is forced to go home, be a witness at her sister’s wedding to her ex-fiancee, and then discuss her birth father’s old shop with evil adopted father – well, she reaches her snapping point.

Things start off well. Olivia now has her shop, and is satisfying customers once she manages to get out of her own head and stop stressing. She has a capable assistant who tries to make her rest (with limited success). She has her friends who helped her when she first came to the city. And she has Elliot, who sure seems to show up an awful lot around her. When she gets the letter telling her to return home for the wedding, everyone springs into action. She’s given a fashion and makeup upgrade, and Elliot decides to start taking her out to fancy restaurants and the theatre – not for any ulterior motives, of course, just as a pal. He’s also agreed to go with her when she returns home. Because the one thing Olivia and all her friends agree on is that this is a giant trap.

The third quarter of this book is dedicated to getting on Olivia’s last nerve. Her father’s shop sits abandoned and covered in weeds. The one employee who used to work there, but had to retire due to injury, is missing. At the wedding itself, her stepsister proves to be a shrieking harridan, demanding Olivia publicly apologize. The noble who controls the area – her ex-fiance’s father – decides to have Olivia marry him after all. And when she refuses, thanks to the help of Elliot, who the noble is terrified of for some reason, they go with Plan B, which is to knock her out, kidnap her, and say she’ll be imprisoned for life making artifacts. Apologies for all the spoilers, but this is a good way of showing that when we learn Elliot’s true identity (which should not surprise any reader who’s paid attention), she just gives up and goes back home by herself. The definition of the final straw.

Now, of course, they make up, which is the last quarter of the book. And there’s a third book which implies that Olivia’s low nobility status (which means she can’t marry Elliot) may soon be fixed by a secret in her family’s past. But for me, the best part of this book was seeing Olivia suffer. It was very realistic and well handled. Sorry, Olivia.

By Rinrin Yuki and Suzaku. Released in Japan as “Olivia Maseki Houshokuten e Youkoso: Ka to Mise wo Oida Sareta no de, Outou ni Mise wo Kamaetara, Naze ka Moto Konyakusha to Gimai no Kekkonshiki ni Dero to Iwaremashita” by Mag Garden Novels. Released in North America by Cross Infinite World. Translated by Jordan Taylor.

The trouble with having so many light novels is that you cannot possibly read everything. This goes double for light novels written for women, because it used to be we never had those. The villainess craze may be annoying people as much as the isekai craze these days, but it has brought to English translation a solid number of series for young women. But you can’t read everything. And thus you have series like this one, which is a good book. Likable protagonist, the traditional evil stepparents and stepsisters are, for the moment, given short shrift, and the romantic lead is attractive and clearly likes Olivia, though I wish he’d tell her who he really is. The main trouble is – why should you read this when you can just read Dahlia in Bloom instead?

When we first meet Olivia’s she’s having a very bad year. Her parents died, and her father’s brother, who took her in, seems to be evil. her fiance started to be less interested in her and more interested in her stepsister. And now she’s being accused of stealing her stepsister’s designs, and thrown out of the house. She then remembers a letter her late father gave her, which turns out to say that if she’s ever in trouble, go to the capital and look up his old friend Gordon. So, after a brief cranky run-in with a nice young man who called her the wrong thing, she ends up at the capital… where the same nice young man directs her lost self to Gordon, who turns out to run a magic artifact shop. Which is good, as it turns out that’s what Olivia is brilliant at.

This is what I call a 4/4 book. Not meaning four points out of four, but rather that it’s in 4/4 time and every plot beat hits on the beat, with no variation. It’s a pure Cinderella story, with Olivia meeting a handsome young man who becomes her friend (and is clearly far more powerful than she knows), exchanging her evil stepmother and stepsister for a parental boss, impressed co-workers, and an older sister type who makes sure that she doesn’t overdo it… well, no, nothing can stop Olivia from overdoing it. Even in books where they’re NOT reincarnated after working to death in Japan (which this one is – no Japan whatsoever), our heroine is trying to impress dead parents, her mentor, and the entire world, which still apparently thinks she’s a thief. (It turns out no one who knows Olivia at all believes this, but that doesn’t really matter when it’s a rumor.) Basically, even if she’s perfect she can never quite match the perfection in her head, so she tends to run on insecurity, despite literally winning a legendary award that will revolutionize the industry by page 140 or so.

This has at least one more volume,l which promises (ugh) more of her evil stepparents and stepsister. It’s good. I liked it. But you don’t have to read it unless you read literally everything.