Apparently it's My Fault That My Husband Has The Head of a Beast

It was only towards the end that I realized this might've been a loose retelling of Beauty and the Beast. This is a classic shoujo romance / fantasy story in the style of Hana to Yume, so if you're into that you'll probably love this book.

While the first half of the book is a 3★ read, the second half definitely deserves an extra star. Since the main character, Rosemarie, is very timid with intense social anxiety, and the male lead, Claudio, starts off being a massive jerk to her, I was really put off by the way he treated her even if he does have a valid reason for being annoyed. He treated her like a thing instead of a human being, and even if he went out of his way to show subtle consideration, it's meaningless if the intent doesn't reach her. The part where he dragged her to a banquet and left her in the middle of strangers, fully knowing she would have a mental breakdown, is absolutely disgusting. For a good while, I was sure I would never grow to like him.

Well, that only lasted until an “accident” happened and Claudio thought he would lose Rosemarie. Then he finally started treating her better, and his behavior towards her from that point on kind of makes up for it. Once they start communicating better, they also have less arguments and misunderstandings which allows more room for the main plot to develop along with the characters. By the end of the book, however, there's still a lot of questions left unanswered. The book never goes into what exactly happened to Rosemarie and Claudio in the Forbidden Forest, despite it being an integral part that sets the entire story into motion. I wonder if it'll be covered in volume 2.

My main issue with this book is definitely the prose. I don't know if it was caused by the writing, the translation, or the editing, but word choices used in this book are often so strange and pretentious they obstruct the story from flowing smoothly. Unless it involves characters who has quirky traits like speaking in unnecessarily flowery language, most of the time it's best to just keep it simple. Especially when it comes to narratives. The reader's comfort should be top priority after all. While I understand that Japanese tend to use repetitions that would come off as super redundant in English, substituting the words with synonyms taken straight out of a thesaurus would only make it unnatural.

Fortunately, I like the story enough to want to pick up the next volume, so I'll be reading that soon.