• • What Works

• The story progresses at a steady pace and you don't have time to get bored, which is perhaps this novel's main quality.
• I like that both the ML and another character are regressors
• FL can see the past through healing wounds. However, she's a bit too OP when you add Foresight to her list of divine powers.
• Very intrigued by the FL's past. No info dump about it for now, just snippets about her life before she had to become a priestess.

• • Issues

Structural Problems

The most glaring issue is the author's baffling decision to skip Act 1 and BREAK INTO 2 entirely, jumping straight into FUN AND GAMES. This is, in my opinion, an error in storytelling structure that severely undermines the narrative.

Act 1 is crucial because it:

1. Establishes the protagonist's normal world and baseline personality
2. Shows what's lacking in their life and what needs to change
3. Builds reader investment in the character's journey
4. Sets up the stakes and conflicts naturally
5. Also, the CATALYST (Lionel coming all bloodied to the monastery and asking for FL) looked like such a fun event to read, why rob your readers like that? ToT

The BREAK INTO 2 is equally vital as it:

1. Marks the protagonist's decisive choice to leave their comfort zone
2. Shows character agency and motivation
3. Creates dramatic tension through that choice
4. Establishes the "new world" rules and challenges

By skipping these essential elements, we're thrust into Serenia's life at the Luanax estate without understanding her emotional journey or seeing her make the choice to leave the monastery. I know she was socially pressured to go because she told us in her internal thoughts, but it looked like she did make the choice to follow Lionel. Or maybe not, we can't know for certain because it was skipped! We are robbed of experiencing her internal conflict and the weight of her decisions. Instead, we're given this crucial information through the web novel's description and sometimes clumsy exposition dumps.

Poor Characterisation

The characters are walking cliches without depth or originality.

• Lionel is the quintessential dark-haired, red-eyed male lead whose mysterious brooding feels lifted straight from a teenage fantasy. Also, he's cold with everyone else except the FL. Gosh, I hate this archetype.
• Serenia herself lacks any distinctive personality traits beyond being cautious and bookish. Her internal monologues about Lionel feel painfully juvenile, more suited to amateur web fiction than a published work.

The supporting cast fares no better:

• Danter is a one-dimensional rake whose debauchery feels cartoonish rather than threatening
• Ardin is the stereotypical calculating nobleman
• Illina is the dumb maid hostile to the FL

Problematic Writing Style

The author relies heavily on telling rather than showing, particularly regarding emotions and character relationships. The political background and character histories are similarly handled through lengthy internal monologues & info dumps that interrupt the narrative flow. Rather than weaving this information naturally into scenes and dialogue, the author opts for paragraph-long exposition dumps. But that's in almost every k-novel, so let's skip that part.

The romantic tension is particularly poorly executed, relying on melodramatic internal musings that wouldn't feel out of place in amateur fan fiction:

• "I watched, mesmerised, as his throat bobbed to swallow the drink"
• "His very face was one that seemed destined to reject an ordinary existence, too extraordinary to allow it."
• "Had any other male lead or even another man said that to me, I'd have been wary, wondering what scheme they were trying to pull. But somehow, when Lionel who probably didn't even know how to flirt said it, it felt genuine."

Whenever I read similar sentences, I thought about The Young and the Restless badly dubbed lol

Who Might Enjoy This

Readers new to the romance fantasy genre who haven't encountered these tropes before

Those seeking undemanding escapist fiction with a black-haired ML

I like it. Serenia shows a degree of intelligence, nuance, and maturity. It’s the typical happenings in these type of isekai novels, but her transportation actually makes her able to navigate this world competently. Her acknowledging she’s selfish, only wants to help when it doesn’t hurt her, and calculating her actions and choices for the greatest chance she has for her goal (living quietly and finding her family) is really real and honest. I don’t really believe her to be a simple FL. The story is early, only 30 chapters,... more>> and we’ve hardly seen anything, much less characters, motivations, mystery, or plot. IMO the first 3o chapters are the set up because it’s all that’s currently relevant. Looking forward to the next chapters. <<less