Review:
I'll start off by saying that I finished this weeks ago and waited far too long to review it. There may be details here and there that I've gotten wrong.
In this series, Japan is protected by five clans wielding powerful barrier-weaving magic. Hana and her twin sister Hazuki are members of a branch family of one of those clans. From an early age, Hazuki was known to be a powerful barrier practitioner who might be able to restore her family to its former glory. Hana, meanwhile, displays only weak abilities at best...at least until her 15th birthday. At that time, for some reason her powers suddenly awaken. However, after spending years being viewed as the lesser twin sister, Hana has no desire to tell anyone about the change.
That doesn't stop Saku Ichinomiya, the new head of the Ichinomiya clan, from noticing her, however. He needs a powerful wife to help him with his duties, and Hana seems like his best bet, even if she won't publicly admit to her powers.
One thing about light novel series: even with cover art and a description, it can be hard to tell what you're getting into. The description and traditional clothing on the cover had me thinking that this was going to be a lot like My Happy Marriage - a historicalish fantasy series about a young woman who has low self-esteem due to years of abuse and who gradually begins to blossom around her seemingly icy fiance. Instead, this is a contemporary-set series starring a heroine who was looked down upon as a child and who has responded by developing a thick skin. She couldn't care less about the opinions of most of the people around her and just wants to remain unnoticed for long enough to go and build a comfortable and quiet life for herself.
Instead, she meets Saku. He manages to convince her to sign a contract with him that will bind them together for long enough that she can help him with his duties as clan leader and then let them go their separate ways with everything Hana might want or need to build a quiet life on her own. Except Hana definitely didn't think things through very well, and there are suddenly a lot more eyes on her than there used to be, as everyone wonders why Saku has declared that someone so seemingly useless will be his bride. Well, it's not like Saku's contract said he wouldn't tell anyone about their engagement.
At this point in the story, I was reminded of shoujo romantic comedies. To the public, Saku and Hana looked like a couple drawn together by love at first sight - why else would someone as powerful as Saku want to marry someone as weak as Hana? Meanwhile, Saku's mother (who didn't know any more of the truth than the public did) was deeply disapproving of their engagement. And in private, Saku and Hana frequently clashed, even as they began to learn more about each other and become closer.
This had more ridiculous moments than I went into it expecting. For example, every barrier magic wielder has at least one shikigami, a being that aids them, and Saku's is a woman with pointed dog ears wearing a maid costume. Supposedly this isn't an indicator of his personal tastes. Saku's shikigami instantly latches onto the one shikigami of Hana's (she has three total) most likely to be embarrassed by the attention.
I liked that one of the things that came up several times in this volume was that the face people presented to the world wasn't necessarily how they really felt. There was potential for the relationship between Hana and her sister to become really interesting - they used to be close but drifted apart after the differences in their magical abilities became apparent. Hana recognized the amount of pressure her sister was under and worried about her, but Hazuki kept pushing her away. Now that Hana has taken over the role everyone thought was guaranteed to go to Hazuki, will Hazuki be relieved or angry? Things aren't quite as complicated with Saku's brother, but he seems to have some issues of his own.
Saku was generally a bit too arrogant for my tastes, and Hana too disengaged (she genuinely didn't want to help others if it took too much effort or put her own plans for her future at risk). The writing wasn't great, the logic was sloppy, and there were some weird tonal issues (time to pause the light-hearted bickering and start an investigation into a dismembered body!), but overall I liked this enough that I'll probably read the next book.
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