[Chinese BG novel] 逆转人生[快穿] / Reverse of life

Wow, toxic girl bossing... yay...

This novel titled 逆转人生[快穿] (2021), written by 何书 is a world hopping novel about a heroine named Lin Jiu'er. In the premise of this novel Lin Jiu'er lived a prosperous life, but had a really bad health, which eventually limited her to a sick bed and later she lost her life, world hopping is her chance to get the healthy body back, while her task is basically to live a better life.

Did I like this novel? Absolutey not. I managed to read up to 100+ chapters (full novel is 276 chapters) and I must say that I had enough of it. And I must note, that this novel has pretty high ranking on Jinjiang, while the comment section is closed (I can understand why, I just want to spam their account with questioning).

To understand my pretty bad attitude towards it, we must start from the core of this novel - Lin Jiu'er - the female protagonist that we follow. Who is she? LJE is described as a lady from a wealthy family, she lived fulfilling life when she was healthier, she got some elite education, is smart etc. So basically we could have expected some high-profile queen. Yes, indeed, but it's the type of queen that I wouldn't like, because she sounds like a girl boss that was abundant in the year this novel was published and we were fed up to our throat with the 'girl boss' rhethoric. It doesn't mean that some ideas that the novel straightforwardly tries to convey are bad, but the way it is delivered and things that are said and expressed in-between is what makes the whole message distorted to me. 

So what does she do and what does she say that made me so edgy. Due to her health issues we meet a very optimistic and life-hungry LJE when she arrives to a new world. Here I really agree with the fact how she wants a healthy body and is happy about it, which is very important, but also money that can solve many issues and they don't betray. Very normal and good thing to say or think about. What I didn't like is her attitude towards original owners. I find this author rather hypocritical, it's the first for me, since LJE often repeats things like women must have a career to have a footing (about this later), it gives them freedom etc., women should not hang on a tree called man and should not depend on men in their lives so on and so forth. But I also see it as a criticism of original owners, I see her not even understanding their situations at all, because she's all about her girl bossing. And unfortunately the novel itself doesn't deliver compassion the original owners should have. From poor background explanation we get what most original hosts (OH) went through, like for example, in the first arc we meet a girl from a patriarchial family, she lives and works in a small place and most of her income is delivered to her family to feed the younger brother. In the end LJE easily breaks free from the situation and she should be inspirational for women, but she says it in such a way that it's a really easy thing to get rid off. And that what irked me the most, for her with elite education etc, it's easy to break free with "you can do it" or "just do it", but the novel it seems doesn't even want to bring up how it's really not easy, many women who grew up like that may wake up or not, it depends on so many factors that this novel doesn't even remotely touches upon. I don't want to compare, but the novel I reviewed previously could deliver compassion and explanation that exactly because of the situation these women went through these events, and there was no one to help them from this quagmire. Another example, the arc where the OH has an amputated half-calf. God it felt like gaslighting depression. Not everyone can cope with the loss, so OH was really depressed because of it (I don't talk about the rest, unfortunately this author writes pretty dumb storylines, this is not my criticism of OH situation), no matter the love she received it's really understandable why she couldn't walk out from this shadow (again, really bad character description, yet we get the OH adored dancing like life) and it's not as easy as LJE says, indeed to get better you need to get to the point that life is still going there's so much to see, but the person needs to walk through these things to reach that understanding and enlightment, it's not easy because you said so. That's why I see LJE only as being described as if she's on the side of all women, but between the lines it doesn't read as such. Maybe it's only me, but because of repetition of the same phrase, I feel like the character is hypocritical and that phrase is - I don't have anything against [blank], but. This phrase is used quite a lot. For example if someone is a housewife you can hear from LJE that she has nothing against housewives, but women better have careers or things to do etc. She's the type of person who uses a nanny to clean and cook and will tell you that women should have something to do. One part which almost killed me is the arc where we suddenly (again, bad storytelling) find out that OH's father is gay and he decided to divorce, which broke OH's mother heart. And again it was I don't have anything against gays, but.. you cheated on marriage and I'm like.. wait a minute, does she think coming out is easy? I don't know if it was easy or not, since the story doesn't dive deeply or explains things giving characters some background. I can only guess that in places this father lived and according to his family it wasn't that easy to come out. Not to mention that LJE simply discarded this father, took her mother away to relief, but oh no we should suddenly add the AIDS plot where the father got infected, but both were absolutely cold-blooded towards him and didn't even bother. Such a bizarre situation, deal with it.

Girl bossing. This part of the novel just smells bad to me. Again career is a good thing, but she tells almost everyone like your life should not revolve around a man and your children, you need to get up and work blah-blah-blah. This continues every arc, the thing I found funny is that she pushes this narrative onto someone we meet like in one scene and the other thing I find funny is how it is said as if a person suddenly gets woke, but reality doesn't work like that. For example, in the 3rd arc we see a theme about domestic violence (yeah all arcs are themed I'd say) and the thing is that the OH didn't leave her husband, but let's not forget that she had a child (according to short and poor description she loved this child a lot). LJE could walk away only because she has no feelings like OH had. She accepts that she is selfish, yeah, but from the passer-by point of view she basically does not take any responsibility for the child of OH whom OH loved so much. And there are many of such contradictory and thorny things that just leave a bad impression. I have a feeling like she doesn't accept the idea that someone wants to be a mother and be with her children.

Especially. This is another phrase that is often on repeat, it is closely followed by "especially girls". LJE is often on a woman's side, as if girls can't do wrong. If anything is touched upon you can often hear a phrase "especially for girls". Women indeed can be socially considered a weaker group, we see so many demands on women from how they should look to how they should act, which behavior of women is more acceptable and favored etc. But honestly I can see that this novel tries to deliver this thought to the reader, but it's just a thought tossed to the reader, I can't see how it is expressed or realized in the novel itself, only through short inserts like LJE hired mostly female workers etc. These parts are so short to me. Plus if we put one group in the sky, we step on the other group, which bring us to - Fake equality. LJE often insists on mutual respect (especially partners), believe it or not I can't feel this equality from her, I never saw her considering the other party, only her ultimatum exists where she puts out her demands (for example not wanting to get married or not wanting to have children), if you don't agree then you can fuck off and no matter how she expresses how she's not against falling in love, it's falling in love according to her rules and she does not compromises with her partners at all. So even if there are relationships, I can't see them as equal. 

I'm always on the girls' side. Are you, really? It's only the character of LJE who is on the girls' side, the author can describe shallow and vendictive women all the way. I must explain, I personally don't think that girls are always right or they should be believed 100% (many cases of female perpetrators do not allow me to be so sure that the girl is always right), it sounds too naive and made LJE sound stupid, take for example arc 6 (where White Moonlight comes to LJE and pours dirty water on her current to-be-partner without analyzin the purpose of this girl coming without receiving any evidence and even believing the acting she started to doubt a person who she spent time with, also she doesn't believe any intuition or the time spent together, she believes facts, otherwise she will always doubt the person...emmm), here comes what I find pretty contradictory, in previous arcs when something she felt was wrong, it was her intuition that pushed her to just find evidence, but here she says like intuition or your own cognition should not be trusted, only evidence. If you talk like that, no one should be trusted then and we should easily believe everything others say without providing proof. 

Many things in this novel are mostly explained to the reader through narrative, rather than being integrated into the plot. Storylines (so far) are pretty straighforward, but shallow imo. Btw they are also not engaging, due to too much narrative. The plots are not explained, which I don't find a bad thing, but it has a strong feeling of "btw forgot to mention" along the way, where sometimes some details or additions are suddenly added (like that info about gay father contracting AIDS, we forgot everything about him, he never appeared on the scene, was never given any drama, his info was just slapped as if author wants us to see, can you see that this scumbag ended up badly? Ugh. But I really could not engage in stories at all, they're all put in modern times, it's ok, yet where is fun when everything is on repeat? LJE goes in every arc with her girl bossing, she basically uses same set of skills, she often just wants to live for herself, sometimes her skills will be updated with "forgot to tell you, while I was old in last world I learned how to [blank]". The plots involved are not really that interesting or new exactly or that they're given any fresh interpretation (it's funny because so far LJE was a novel author twice))).

Anyway, I find many things in this novel problematic, you only hear criticism of certain stereotypes that are harmful to women (I agree that stereotypes are harmful), but it feels like only author wants to deliever these ideas through narrative yet it's not well integrated in the story and also this type of delievery feels shallow, doesn't make you feel compassionate about the story. I don't even see LJE as cool as it is described. 

Conclusion. Maybe the author really wanted to do a good thing, yet to me they are not very successful. They might be in top 100 on the list, to me they were unable to deliver properly their ideas and instead of truly grasping the idea of how to show equality, how stereotypes work and why they can be harmful, it really isn't it to me at all. I honestly just want to give it 1/5.

PS: The story of faking molestation in arc 6, which kinda made me go dumb. The situation is as follows, OH in this acr is together with a rich guy who used her as a stand-in for his White Moonlight. This rich guy has a cousin. After break-up with the rich guy LJE comes closer with cousin (he looks and has a name of someone she was in a relationship in previous arc, btw as always), they knew each other early, after a while started contacting and communicating. She knows him personally and also knows the plot. White Moonlight refused the rich guy, she secretly loves this cousin too, so she wanted to discredid either of them to break them apart (note, rich guy didn't find it weird how a girl asks him if his ex has sextapes or how she asks him to act in love again), while nothing worked she appears in front of LJE and accuses cousin that when she was a teen he molested her in their house. LJE started doubting cousin because of it, since "maybe this wasn't written in the plot, I can't believe a girl would lie about this out of nowhere" as if she never doubted White Moonlight's words at all. LJE only calmed down when (oh so coincidentally) she saw surveillance video. She openly asked about this incident of course, what is peculiar is how the cousin says he understands why she asked and he respects her etc. it sounded so weird, as if he understand why she falsely accused him and was ok with it. I don't know, I was just weirded out how it was put together. Because from one side LJE considers herself rather smart and she also lived so many lives, you might think that she can judge people or see through their acting, but with the narrative that no accusation is ungrounded it becomes too one-sided and honestly if we just simply believe words others say then we all should be paranoid. I don't know how to explain it well, I believe that victims should be heard, but we should not rule out that it could be a false accusation, otherwise... The best example, look at JD, he went through the whole legal process just to clean his name, but can you imagine the stress behind it.