Mamahaha no Tsurego ga Motokano datta
My Stepmom's Daughter Is My Ex

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One of the best LNs I've read. Remember THIS IS NEITHER INCEST NOR NTR, I've seen some rascals misunderstanding the title and commenting their own BS so do not get misunderstood. I really like the way author tries to bring out their true feelings through multiple POVs to the reader. From the beginning, one can see they're obviously still in love with each other but do not like to accept the fact in front of the other person, and their shared 黒歴史 ("Kuro Rekishi" meaning dark past/history) is kinda a new concept I've seen in anime/manga/novels. They're slightly different from osananajimi but I like their ... relationship. This is a very good novel for those who like romcom and we can expect for an anime adaption in the near future.

I came to read this novel after watching the first episodes of the anime, as I was curious about the initial setup and thought that the novel could be richer. I was interested because it was depicting in a slightly roundabout way how a couple has to reinvent its relationship after the initial passion, and how that was possibly a difficult process with a lot in introspection and painfully revisiting past errors.
And in fact, that first 4 volumes do that job pretty well and allow us to dig deeper and deeper within the complicated relationship of Yume and Mizuto. Apart from some scenes that ... could have been skipped, there are very strong and well written moments. The whole series are particularly good during the scenes between the two main characters, where we can really have an insight of their thought processes, the difficulties they have to cope with their history together and the new situation. Unfortunately, this positive trend is definitely going downward with the 5th volume.
One of the reason is the Isana Higashira character, which is essentially a plot device to introduce a painful love triangle and pseudo-comic situation. The sheer amount of chapters dedicated to the usually pretty empty discussions between Mizuto and her moves us too far away from the main couple, whose management of their relationship was my main interest in the books, and these chapters are so repetitive with pseudo-erotic comments and comedy that I ended skipping them altogether.
In the last three books, we're also introduced to a plentiful of new characters from the Student Council, none of them being memorable in any way, but who take an increasingly large share of the chapters, moving us even further away from Mizuto and Yume. Book 8 is so filled with their vanilla stories that we barely have anything left to witness the two main characters 'evolution. Mizuto's character in particular, suffers from this situation, showing very limited development in 4 volumes out of 8 and looking very often like a total jerk.
If you had the fact that the writer came back to all the usual tropes of school slice of life romance (cultural festival, sport festival, summer festival, at least we were spared Valentine and new year), it unfortunately seems to be one of the numerous examples of a light novel when the writer lost it along the way.
There are still good chapters in books 6 to 8 (5 was essentially uninteresting) but I don't really know what to do with the upcoming releases. Book 9 seems to introduce Yume's father though, so hopefully it could be the equivalent for Mizuto that book 4 was for Yume and this one was definitely the strongest.
So there's still hope that it ends as well as it started.

Like many people, I was intrigued by the premise having seen an ad for the anime on Youtube, and wound up reading the manga followed by all eight (8) volumes of the Light Novel (thanks Hellping) because I grew invested in the story.

If I was to sum up the pith of the narrative, it is about two people finding their place with each other as sibilings / potential lovers, despite carrying the baggage of having broken up with each other some two weeks before the main narrative begins. The key questions are: what does it mean to be a lover, where does the line ... between former lovers / family get blurred, and the inbetween.

I will admit, while I was initially thrilled by the direction taken by the author for the first 6 - 7 volumes, I slowly came to realise what a train-wreck of a story it started to grow into by the final and most recent volume (8).

Being primarily a romance story, I will focus on that aspect in this review to see if it holds water as a "romance" story.

In terms of the romance between the titular main couple,

[spoiler]

my humble opinion is that the author has either totally lost the plot, or has decided, rather disingenuously, to string readers along with a patently meaningless love triangle, particularly WRT Isana, whom the author has expressly said in various of his afterwords for the earlier volumes, that she wasn't even in the race to begin with.

Having read all of the author's afterwords in from Vol. 1 - 7, and then finally reading Volume 8, I cannot help but feel that the author has totally betrayed his characterisation of the Mizuto in a complete volte face by causing him to suddenly develop feelings for Isana, when at least up to to the end of Vol 7, Mizuto states in no uncertain terms that he is interested / loves Yume.

I can appreciate that "love" is a complex things. Sometimes "side-baes" or love triangles in anime / manga / LNs receive characterisation so that they are not built as flat characters. And to that end, it is true that Mizuto condoning Isana's flirtations towards him ARE the source of his own destruction / the destruction of the Mizuto / Yume ship... but what I cannot accept is that the author has simply written Mizuto as a character that repeats again and again that he has no feelings for Isana, and that he has eyes only for Yume, and yet that catastrophe that was Vol. 8 could happen.

This coupled by the fact that the author's afterwords from Vol. 6 onwards seem to imply (to me at least) that he is extending the story for the sake of it. Money? Unclear... but this feels like a sus callback to what is happening with feaking Oregairu and its money-eyed author.

Call it "realistic" writing, but I feel cheated. [/spoiler]


*edited to make spoiler section clear - don't know how to blank out the spoiler portions.