Even tho I said Callisto is my number 1, the truth is I also like all the other ML in this novel, to the point that I have a complicated feelings like I want especially Eclise and Vinter, and Reynald and even Derrick to have a happy ending of their own.

I still ship Callisto and Penny the most, so... I think I am very happy about the development of the story till the end.

But I have a bit of complicated feelings about Penny, especially in the earlier chapters of the story with Eclise. It’s a bit of a pity that she just saw this all as a game and ended up having a bad ending with Eclise. I think that all happened because she’s never sincere with Eclise at all and I’m sad. I mean I understand it all happened because she has a certain goal in mind, to reach the 100% goal, but ah... it’s complicated. I still wanted her to end up with Callisto but I don’t want her to treat Eclise the way she did :’)

so kinda sad 'bout his end, but Callisto really grew on me, he's pretty good husband material (♥ω♥)

Once the game "ends", it starts getting predictable and boring, there are some loose storylines that never get resolved (for ex, the reincarnation of the antagonist, what happened to Rennald and Derrick, What happened with Delman ppl?, Etc), our MF starts acting up for no reason (those men are brainwashed, dear, you know that)... and, above it all, Penelope ends up with the most basic ML of them all... (also, the most boring one)...

annoying because the settings for the characters (all the characters) were too cold and abusive of the original owner without acceptable or logical reasons (to the point I wished if they all just get stabbed to death) but then the behavior of the characters suddenly changed 180 degree change from being too cold and abusive to being tsundere, overly respectful or overly caring.

This illogical and sudden change almost ruined the whole novel for me.

liking and disliking are personal preferences but I think this one is more suitable for female readers or other readers who are fine with those settings, for me it's just annoying right now so I'll be dropping it.

They better give me a reason to like any of those guys. Ofcs. Apart from the kind marquis and the little s*ave boy. Ugh. I don't like using this word.

Yes she’s indifferent cold hearted and callous, hey she’s not necessarily right at times and makes blunders (like the Ecklies situation... My oh my was that one awful thing on her and arguably his part) these are her flaws she struggles to overcome due to her past trauma which ultimately build up these feelings, (think, she became isolated, bullied and hated by these people who can I just say SPIKED her food, probably one of the reasons why she hates brothers, though obviously she ends up in unison with these guys. How can she be normal and act like a perfectly decent person with these flaws? Hell I’d cry if I were in her situation...) but I have to disagree with whoever said she never changes at all. Are we like reading the same story? The naive and stubborn girl who had selfish intentions from the beginning is not the forgiving and perceptive yet ruthless woman we see near the end. You have to remember that she’s cold to everybody, especially her ‘family’ due to her negative bias and experiences from the past life. Do you really think such a fatally wounded individual can actually become a loving and caring person overnight? The Normal transmigrator probably could, but the author chose to make a realistic representation of a traumatised person who doesn’t necessarily have the best morals due to the shunning from everyone. Had we received more flashbacks from the past life I’d live happily content but unfortunately I can only speculate with the fragments we have.

One the reviews said she’s not the real Penelope but obviously she is as the story tells you this with the whole Winter fiasco, so now think about it, yes it was as a result of brainwashing, but these ultimately flawed yet lovable people like Reynold and the Duke even my favourite ML Callisto were the main reason for why she/Penelope died. She may not remember it, but still it’s a bit crazy and far fetched to expect her to forgive them. Ultimately she does though, as her character CHANGES, yk character growth? Also I’ve seen that she’s completely indifferent to everyone, which yeah when she said that Leila could kill the Echarts or something like that, it was definitely heartless, but look closer during the period after Leila comes back, preferably in the manhwa as it’s visualised. Do you see the starkly more fiery and unreasonable actions? Do you see the gaunt appearance? That is all I can tell to the people who deem her completely terrible in personality. Not only did she have this brimming trauma, making her aloof and standoffish, but with the stress and genuine anxiety over being shunned permanently and the hopelessness about being killed after all the effort she put in, is just another factor for why she is the person she is. Well that’s the end of that rant, time for an actual review.

My favourite male lead, the crown prince Callisto Regulus. He is whipped... Not caring about her coming from another world or for being an ancient magician even though magic is outlawed, letting her go on archeological pursuits for however many years, getting anyone with blonde hair to dye it black so his princess could only see his golden locks, even ready to let the empire be destroyed if Penelope was Leila, need I say more? He would honestly sacrifice the world for this woman and I can’t blame him. Penny is my favourite female lead despite her flaws. Still this Goldilocks, as does every other character, had his shortcoming his being his lack of care towards love that temporarily hurt his relationship with the princess.

Despite being presumed dead during that fight and his sacrifice, he actually became an amnesiac, wandering around for many years and suspicious over Penelope as we see in like one of the side stories idk which, to which she promptly apologises to him and well idk the details were iffy as hell. Now there relationship, wow... so toxic is all I want to say, though ultimately even with the brainwashing and stuff he was probably more wrong than her in that situation, then again she was quite wrong too. So essentially to those who said she brainwashed him, he did actually know from the beginning she was using him, and he was planning to kill her and use her too (in that side story, he wanted to kill her too tbh) however he ended up becoming obsessed with Penelope thus why his affection bar was 99% Obviously I can’t remember the details since it was a bit hazy but he was brainwashed by Leila into bringing Yvonne (Leila) back to the duchy in order to shun Penelope and have her to himself... Really damm iffy can I say even with the brainwashing... Now people were mad at Penelope for abandoning him, but tbh if I saw his crazed expression and crude desires (Brainwashed I know but she clearly didn’t at the time) then I would have also turned away and ran off. She’s is required to fill and love him anyways, so her grant for freedom was indeed an attempt for him to stay away, which I felt was a better outcome than anything, especially since he resorts to kidnapping her later... Her ‘manipulation’ (not really) and his amplified desires lead to an ill fated relationship which is thankfully resolved. The dude was fairly pitiful and wronged despite his nasty acts

Oh my god the plot twist with Winter being the force behind Penelope’s endless reincarnations to the point her soul broke was really interesting. Gosh the world building is crazy... To think his soul was burning all for Penelope’s sake, due to waking up the manipulation of Leila, makes for a real tragedy. Had he been the male lead could you imagine the potential? A lover who has to always realise too late his shortcomings and weakness, only to realise that these actions would lead to his beloved’s end. Perfect story material but unfortunately he is only a sub male lead. In the end he and Penny are in cahoots, being good friends and he is a teacher to her child

Derrick: You know what, I don’t hate the dude as much as the story tried to get me too. That impure love he had for Pen? I never saw any of it, nothing except for maybe that bird thing but that was just creepy. However when he was grovelling as her beck, it was fairly satisfying. He had an interesting character too, a seemingly reasonable man who actually was irritable and arrogant. It actually not common I see such a character, still in the end he was just a victim of brainwashing of course... Reynold: The beloved pinky, one of our fan favourites beside Pen and Callisto, he genuinely had an interesting reason for hating Penelope, though it obviously wasn’t justification for what occurred. Hey, if I had some child brought in like a replacement only to hear her wish for my lost sister to never come back, well I’d be very angry. That jewellery incident wasn’t deserved though, just cruel.

Duke: So he definitely isn’t getting father of the year any time soon, but he definitely was regretful and the character with the most growth. Over all I enjoyed his character and the comedic value he had. When he was going to start a revolution after hearing Penelope was pregnant...

Cha Siyeon was brought home by her father to indifferent half-brothers. Even though her late mom didn't have anything to do with her half-brother's mom passing away (according to MTL), they somehow still blamed her for it. Even the employees at home treated her like tr*sh. In their eyes, she and her mom were shameful people who broke up a family. She finally managed to get away from all of them when she entered college and moved out. Juggling between three part-time jobs and studying, she somehow still managed to play an otome game.

The game offered normal mode in the heroine's (Yvonne) point of view and hard mode in the villainess's (Penelope) point of view. In normal mode, Yvonne was given a 30% favorability for each of the possible male leads; the Crown Prince (Callisto), the Marquis (Vinter), the Young Duke (Derrick), the Duke's second son (Reynold) and the Knight (Eclise). While in the hard mode, Penelope either got negative or non- favorability.

The plot of the game was a cliche one. I'm going to use bullet points for this.

- Yvonne went missing as a child

- the Duke adopted Penelope because she resembled Yvonne

- the two brothers, Derrick and Reynold hated Penelope for taking Yvonne's place

- on Penelope's coming of age ceremony (her 18th birthday), Vinter brought back Yvonne

- Eclise who was bought from s*avery by the Duke, was appointed as Yvonne's escort

- Yvonned met Callisto and they fell in love

- Penelope as the villainess was killed by Callisto

After dying multiple times in the hard mode version, Cha Siyeon finally had enough of it. But, the next moment she woke up, she had transmigrated into Penelope. And now, she had to do all she could to get 100% favorability and a love confession from one of the male leads before the coming-of-age ceremony for her to return home.

The story was divided into five volumes with 231 chapters + 40 side story + 8 special stories. It was a hard mode read because the translation was just like MTL. The book was so popular that it was adapted into a manhwa.

In my honest opinion, the side story was what led me to give this four stars. The author decided to drag the story because somehow she 'realized' that she forgot to give closure in the 231 chapters of the story. And after 40 chapters of that, she once again 'realized' that although Penelope got her closure, Cha Siyeon never got hers, and lets give it another 8 chapters.

Imagine James Cameron waking up one day to write a side story for Titanic and lo and behold, Jack Dawson survived the wrecked and for Rose to tell him to go some place else to create his own happy ending because she got hers. And when we thought that was over, James wrote another side story to show Rose and her family being happy and for Rose to finally let go of her past.

And so, the tragedy tag was useless because where's the tragedy?

If she had been a bit more sincere with Eclise, it wouldn’t have turn out that way. Poor Eclise!

Penny and Callisto forever! I was actually satisfied that she didn’t completely forgive the ducal family but also didn’t cut them off her life completely. Except for Derek. Derek can just suck it! Her family in her original world can also suck it.

which is him pressing a sword to her neck and then he eventually

(Which, btw, is the OG FL Yvonne)

THE FORESHADOWING I'M TALKING ABOUT BY THE WAY is that the reason why Yvonne (OG FL) was so kind in the otome game, the reason why all the options were only ever KIND, the reason why she somehow had everyone HEADS OVER HEELS FOR HER for like no damn reason was because it was all like a magic or hypnotizing typa shit. Like we finally have an explanation as to why the FL was originally kind. Most novels out there we just have the OG FL be a saint and then miraculously and suddenly be a total bit*h when the FL reincarnates, like what??

In chapter 166-167 I f*ckING CRIED DUDE. I LOVE THE DUKE. We get to see his side, and HE FINALLY APOLOGIZED and our penelope even cried tooooo ughh I love this!

when the ML was beside MC when she got bedridden. To see the ML behaving that was over MC got me soooooooooooooo I dont even know how to explain, but got me so hyped.