When I was in university, I read a lot of Japanese books – after all, it was mandatory since I was studying in Japanese. But after I graduated and moved back to Singapore, my exposure to the Japanese language dropped dramatically; I went back to reading and speaking and thinking in English.

But sometime last year, I started feeling a sense of worry that my Japanese was detoriating far too rapidly. So I made small changes: I started listening to a Japanese podcast (on books), I restarted reading manga in Japanese, I read No Longer Human in Japanese, and I booked a trip to Okinawa. On that trip to Okinawa, I headed to several bookstores to grab some books – two from the podcast that I was listening to and six light novels from two manga/anime series that I was following.

Four of the light novels were from the My Happy Marriage (わたしの幸せな結婚) and honestly, that has CHANGED my attitude towards reading in Japanese.

On the surface, My Happy Marriage isn’t the kind of thing I read – because I don’t read romance. The whole premise of the story is that Miyo, a girl who is being abused by her stepmother and stepsister, is sent off to mary Kudo Kiyoka, an elite noble who has the reputation of scaring off his fiancées. It’s a typical Cinderella-type story which I wouldn’t be interested in if I wasn’t already watching the anime.

But there’s just something about the story that hooked me. I think it’s the combination of character growth for both Miyo and Kiyoka (in particular, I love how Miyo blossoms from book one onwards!!), an interesting magical system (it’s a world where magic is real and Kiyoka works as a leader in the magical corps), and a plot that grows in complexity. We moved from the drama of Miyo and Kiyoka learning about one another and the truth behind Miyo’s mother to court intrigue and now, to a potential uprising from a very powerful magic user. All the while, our lead couple is learning more about one another and falling in love. I loved how the plot, worldbuilding, and character development were balanced.

My Happy Marriage isn’t the first Light Novel that I read. But my previous Light Novels were all based on vocaloid songs and the way they were written (with katakana used for particles) made it a bit harder for me to read. The first volume of My Happy Marriage, on the other hand, was the perfect reading level for me and I surprised myself by finishing it over the weekend (compared to literal months that I took to read No Longer Human). The second novel was slightly harder since there were court scenes and the formal Japanese there was not what I was used to, but I still found it very hard to put down.

Both the manga and the anime have not caught up to the events in the third novel, which starts a new story arc, so we moved from “familiar” (aka can still follow along even if I don’t understand everything) to new territory. But I think because it’s been a progressive increase in the difficulty level, I still managed to understand and enjoy the books. Well, not really enjoy, every time I start one of these light novels, I end up bingeing on it (which is why I only start them on Friday nights).

Right now, I’m at the stage of regretting that I only bought the first four books and trying to figure out the best way to buy the others. But I do have other books in Japanese that I’m reading so for now, I’m trying to finish my existing Japanese TBR before I get my next My Happy Marriage fix.