Title: The Villainess's Dark Side
Author: G_Adeline
Rating: M
Genre: Romance
Status: Complete
Library Category: Original Fiction
Summary: When she finally understood, she was already too late. The protagonists had already fallen in love with each other and planned for a marriage. Maybe she was still lucky though, for she narrowly avoided a situation of certain death. A long, painful and agonizing death. However, she couldn’t let this be. There was inside her a growing anger that had yet to disappear. She had yet to vent. It was a need. One that may lead her to death’s door too, but if she died by this person’s hands, certainly, it would be in a quicker way.

She just never thought that his revenge would come in the form he chose to give it. He was quite a… bewildering man.

Link: Royal Road

So, I blame @Selethe for putting me down this rabbit hole, but it's actually, surprisingly good.

First, it's completed, which is a rarity among Chinese based novels. Second, it kept its story short (perhaps even too short), which is even rarer among Chinese based novels. Clocking in at around 70-90k words, it's a relatively self-contained romance.

While it starts off quite classically for the genre (bad woman goes back in time to fix things), it doesn't try to portray the villainess as some misunderstood person. She's a bad person who lost and got a second chance.

Now, this story is strictly a romance and is quite smutty (kinda meh on that one), but the romantic development between the female and male leads is quite something to read. It's the definition of a love-hate bodice ripper, just well-executed in my opinion. By the end of it, the story was actually capable of making me feel something, which is rarer and rarer these days.

(I may just be a massive slut for villainess stories, YMMV).

3.5/5, rounding up.

 

Huh, so... I started off pretty bored with this but the first smut scene (some of which are very suspect) is... I don't want to say engaging, but it's engaging. I have only gotten to two smut scenes so far, and I'm not sure if I'll continue the story or not since I'm bored with the plot aspects, but yeah.

For what this story is trying to do I think it succeeds. I'll go with Halt and say 3.5/5 rounded up, even if it's not my cup of tea.

Edit: So, do I have this right?

Spoiler

Lady realizes out of the blue that she's part of a book. Specifically she is the villain in the book and a different woman is about to marry her fiance, the Prince. She knows that her next move in the book would be to raise issue with this, which would lead to exile (including eventual rape / torture / death).

Her solution to this is to... rape the man who is in love with the woman who will marry her fiance? Yup, that sounds about right.

Expecting him to kill her for it, apparently.

Interesting logic.