Otonari no Tenshi-sama ni Itsunomanika Dame Ningen ni Sareteita Ken
The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten

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This LN does not have an extraordinary plot.
It's the same as any other Light Novel you know. Girl is famous, Guy's common and isn't special, but then the girl begins to have some interest in the guy.

Maybe it’s just my personal enjoyment, but still I think, that this book's quite enjoyable.

The stories did always put a smile on my face, with cute situations, or just wholesome moments. There of course are funny moments too, with for example the side character teasing, the situation they are in, trying not to get seen and so on…

I think that it‘s more of ... a realistically based book. It doesn't have any stupid or too embarrassing actions, like "I love her, so I'm gonna confess to her in front of the whole school!", or something. Of course, you don't live next to a beautiful girl. But everything are decisions you'd probably do IF you did.

The Novel continues in a straight pattern, where by time the Protagonists begin to know each other more and more and get close to each other. There’s no such thing like losses or heartbreaking, which makes this book perfect for people like me, who prefer cute and wholesome books.
So, if you want to buy this book for anything too unnatural or strange, then I wouldn't recommend it.

(Also, trough every book, there are around 10 arts which were all drawn by hanekoto (@hanekoto2424 on Twitter))

You've read a story like this, and it's been done better. Guy secretly likes the girl and she starts to warm up to him. If you've never read anything like that before you might like this, but it's been done to death and much better than done here.

It's filled with stereotypes and offers almost nothing unique. The writing itself isn't bad exactly, but it's not what I'd call good either. Then the characters, for what felt like most of the book, aren't being particularly nice to each other and are generally inconsistent and I couldn't stand how the girl was basically the guy's mom ... which is all too real since the MC is literally 15 years old. I was hoping something would change, that they'd start to have heartfelt moments, but they barely connect at all through this first book. And yes, that's why the title is about her being an angel, it's because she acts like the MCs mom, complete with nagging included. Honestly, that kinda grosses me out.

I wish I had more to critique than that but that's the whole first book. I have no idea why this is rated an 8 on MAL at the time of writing this.

Needless to say, I will not be reading the next entry.

Note: I am reading this series in Japanese, and my review reflects my opinions after the latest volume, the eighth, which released earlier in January of this year.

The overwhelmingly positive response to this novel, both in Japan and in the West, is genuinely incomprehensible to me. As someone who isn't particularly into light novels, I had picked up this series in response to all the glowing praise claiming that this was the quintessential slice-of-life romance series that avoids all the drama bullshit plaguing its other ilk. Now, having agonizingly slogged through the whole thing, I have to say that the more people lavish acclaim on ... this series as a paragon of the romance novel, the more it seems to serve as an indictment of the genre as a whole.

The series is, at its core, the romance between a fairly unremarkable male protagonist and a heroine who seems to be an embodiment of all that is good in the world. I don't really have an issue with 'ideal girlfriend' fiction in and of itself, but Tenshi-sama suffers from a crippling problem in execution The author has endeavored to try to give Mahiru superhuman appeal in every single facet and does not hesitate to scream in the reader's face about her loveliness every other line. In what I would've considered parodic fashion if I didn't know better, every single action Mahiru takes is accompanied by a flurry of adjectives about how cute or beautiful or charming she is, like the author thinks we're amnesiacs who need reminding every five seconds that yes, Mahiru is a girl with attractive qualities. The absurd levels of grandstanding are so distracting it completely destroys the notion that Mahiru is anything but an artificial creation of the author's delusions. Rather than feeling like a real character, Mahiru feels like a shallow caricature of similar heroines in its genre.

The main character himself, Amane, is relatively nondescript, the gloomy and unsociable type that the reader might be able to see themselves in to some degree. His uninteresting personality becomes supplemented by less… pleasant traits once his relationship with Mahiru begins to deepen, however. He seems to be afflicted with a mixture of possessiveness towards being the only person who knows the 'real' side of Mahiru as well as sexist tropes that seem to have persisted in Japanese fiction for decades. For instance, being unable to grasp the fact that girls can, in fact, enter boys' rooms without the boy being consumed with a monstrous desire to sexually assault them. Or unironically telling Mahiru not to show too much skin or it'll ignite the lusts of the males in her vicinity. The worst part is that these warnings are justified, at least within the setting itself, by every single male character that doesn't isn't particularly relevant being uncontrollably horny zombies. The gaggle of boys in Mahiru's school (beyond the few male friends Amane has) are apparently unable to speak to or about her without either being possessed by reverence, lust, or explosive jealousy towards any sort of interaction between Mahiru and Amane. Of course, the presence of these boys only elevates Amane's own value, transforming him into a gentleman concerned about Mahiru's well-being when quite frankly he would come across as just creepy.

Another thing worth mentioning is how awful the writing can be; the author often seems to worry that the reader might have never had a human relationship in their entire lives, and takes great pains to elaborate on interactions that someone with half a brain could have instantly understood from context alone. For instance, it can go like this: (in response to a playful verbal rib, Amane punches his friend in the shoulder. But, his friend didn't feel any pain from the punch. That's because Amane didn't put any force into his punch in the first place, because he wasn't being serious, because he was just responding to a joke). Obviously, the reader would have been able to figure out from the very first line that Amane was not, in fact, trying to beat the everloving crap out of his friend. This sort of writing not only pointlessly pads the story, but also contributes to the sheer sense of artificiality that seemed to hang over me while reading.

I do want to reiterate again that I have no issue with the sort of ordinary-boy-meets-perfect-girl story that at least partially draws its appeal from the reader being attracted to the heroine herself. But, Tenshi-sama feels like a distillation of everything that can go wrong with this genre to the point of feeling like a parody. I can only hope that this series is not representative of what people out of their heroines and romance stories as a whole. But the more comments I see about how wonderful Mahiru is and how desperately they want to marry someone like her, the more my faith is shaken…