The next installment by the author of my personal favorite "Villain show" and "Three rebellious brothers" (of course the titles are shortned).
Original name of this novel was "One day I became a fake daughter" which can be seen from the cover, but later was quickly renamed to what it is today, I of course freewheeled in translating it, but it conveys the meaning. Once again I will be putting up my own summary too.
Summary: Shen Yi had a dream before she celebrated her 17th birthday, she saw the future in it in which she became a fake daughter and did not want to move out, did many things and soon met her bad ending. Shen Yi was puzzled because she was definitely not that type of person at all. But she was still stressed and afraid, what if she will become uncontrolled.
When the truth came out she moved out and refused to return to the Shen family.
But unlike the awaited scorn and disgust that she saw in her dreams the things were different in reality, her friends did not turn away from her, her fiance was there for her too. And even her brother and the true daughter moved in to live with her.
Although this novel is short by the number of chapters, but each chapter is like 10k characters in original, compared to usual 3k. And even if it feels like not much, there is still something to unpack between the lines.
I have no idea what this author does with her novels that gets to me, because from one side we have these tropey stuff and unimaginably cliche things like fake daughters and also if you read their works they read as if you watch a drama series, it's very engaging, but from another side they do not take the cliche path when it comes to the core situation and emotional exploration. How many stories are all the same where one of the fake/true daughters is good and other is evil. And how many of them actually explore any other type of situation with fake and true daughter actually being friends? Here is a completely different situation, it's more real? Because Shen Yi is full of guilt when she realizes that her dreams are actually true, she is a bit envious of the excellence of Jiang Yue (true daughter), but she also accept that Jiang Yue is truly great and kind. She also admits that even if she feels guilty, a very small part of her still wanted to stay or not allow things to be revealed, as she would continue to live with her family she cherished for so many years, but she also knew that her conscience will eat her alive if she attempted that. Which is totally human, unlike many of the melodrama stories that exist purely for entertainment with one person being so painfully one-sided in their pursuit of hate, vengeance or whatever.
Shen Yi despite often being described as silly and cute actually has a resilient personality, she might be silly a bit, but when you dig deeper you realize why she is like that, what made her like that, she might be showing her dissatisfaction, but she is not a petty personality, she knows what is right to do. For example, when she is asked to be replaced by Jiang Yue at the sports meeting so Jiang Yue will get points for her scholarship. She might have acted a bit, but she still gave up her place. To me it's true and more complicated personality shown than plain envy, that she is okay with allowing herself to be replaced, but she's not some saint that won't grumble about it a bit. Or how one of the characters, Xu Qingzhe saw her trying to clean the fish, because she's a lady from wealthy family she never touched these things, but despite her facial expressions and initial fear she still finished what she's supposed to do.
So even if some might find parts of her character unlikable, she's a nice main character overall. It's a nice journey to see what actually matters for her.
Also the novel has a type of open ending considering romantic relationships. Not because they're young, but because of what happens in the novel and how several lines of relationships were developed. They were not developed in a romantic way in any shape or form, but they have that potential.
/SPOILERS/
A bit of spoilers per usual.
I hope I won't rant for too long.
As explained Shen Yi has this type of personality, a bit of spoiled lady with a temper, but not much. She is actually pretty cheerful and cute.
When she realizes that her dreams are true, she can't help but feel guilty towards Jiang Yue, by this time they have a great relationship and they became friends. Shen Yi found out that she is Jiang Yue's savior and hero in a way.
But now things are different. Living with the knowledge of her replacing someone Shen Yi was completely devastated and when she came to the pivotal point that changed her life - car accident - she felt relieved that it happened, that now she can be more honest about things she knows but can't explain (prohibition).
Instead of staying with the Shen family, she moves out and lives with the Jiang family, she actually doesn't care much about wealth and stuff, for her family happiness is more importnat.
The one who acts the weirdest is father Shen. Has no official name actually, just Father Shen.
Later we find out that there is a reason for him acting like that, because he knew much earlier that his daughter was not his. But because she was raised at his home with his own beliefs of what a lady should look like he made the choice not to reveal the truth. Some of it can be traced to the middle when Shen Yi remembers that when she was younger she actually ate more and gained weight, so she was prone to gaining weight like her biological brother, but Father Shen made few harsh comments about her looks, which made her self-conscious and she lost weight eventually. Between the lines you can read that the influence of Father Shen is what built a character like Shen Yi, more like her unruly side, but the one who truly put a hand on her education was actually her friend Meng Zhihan, she was the one who took part explaining the right and wrong of life to Shen Yi. But to Father Shen it was no difference which daughter comes or goes, because he did not look at them as people, but more like tools, which is revealed much later. This became the reason for Jiang Yue and Shen Yu to leave the Shen family and move close to Shen Yi, so they could stay together, unlike Father Shen all children did not inherit his type of thinking. But also under pressure Father Shen shared the truth with the Wen family and consequently Wen Que, Shen Yi's fiance, knew the truth too, which consequently led to Shen Yi and Wen Que breaking up (although at first it felt like they'll stay together, since Wen Que did not care if she's Shen's daughter or not), because Shen Yi couldnt accept this act of lie. She disliked being lied to the most and also she hated that the choice of what to do with her life was made for her, by her father and Wen Que. Although this happened closer to the end of the novel of course, these revelations and break-ups. Before that I tought that Wen Que would be official ML, but he actually didn't feel like it at the same time, since other two male character had a development with Shen Yi that could lead to some sort of romance if author would give them a chance, basically what author did is to build a base for all three emotional lines and left it at that, without giving any of the male characters further development.
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It was actually quite a heart-warming story with a bit of expanding family. It was nice to see how the younger generation acted about the situation and stuck together no matter what.
RATE: 5/5.
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