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The Trials and Tribulations of My Next Life as a Noblewoman Volume 1 by Kamihara, Illustrated by Shiro46. Published by J-Novel Heart (J-Novel Club).

When I first saw this cover among the new licenses by J-Novel club, I didn’t think much of the series. A lot of the newer female-centered isekai novels play with tropes related to Otome dating games, like “My Next Life as a Villainess”. I’ve watched and read a few series here and there that piqued my interest, but I haven’t gotten too deep into the genre. And even if it’s not isekai, “noblewoman” series might as well be a genre itself. Even in western literature, regency fic is super popular.

However, while looking at the forums, I saw it mentioned that the author of Ascendance of a Bookworm, Miya Kazuki, actually recommends this series! I couldn’t find proof of this anywhere, but that plus the other fans who have hyped this series up have definitely marked this as a series to look out for. I also noticed that this book is also extremely long for a light novel (Kobo reports this book as being 180k words long!!).

Given all the buzz around the series, I had to give it a chance!

Right at the beginning of the story, the main character Karen is disowned from her noble family due to being the product of adultery. However, her siblings still care for her, and just a few years later, her older sister has managed to negotiate a comeback for Karen with the condition that she re-enter noble society through marriage!

Since the main family dislikes her (Karen is from a branch family), they present her with two options. An old margrave on the frontier, or a young, handsome knight from a prestigious family? Everyone assumes she’ll pick the knight, but Karen has her own goals and picks the older man!

This is just the starting premise, and it’s already a fantastic one. This book is a wild ride; the “Trials and Tribulations” in the title are not for show. The Japanese title, 転生令嬢と数奇な人生を| Tensei Reijou to Suuki na Jinsei wo, roughly translates to “The Reincarnated Noblewoman’s Misfortunate Life”.

Karen goes through it, and there are many harrowing scenes that follow. It’s not all torture, but this book may as well be otome isekai x game of thrones. There’s a lot of disparate “bad” events that piece together to make up a larger political environment that Karen has to navigate. Notably, the main character doesn’t have any remarkable skills. Even when she tries to do the typical isekai thing of introducing “inventions”, it simply doesn’t work because she doesn’t have the necessary expertise. Other than her previous life experience, Karen truly is just an ordinary woman who wants to live an ordinary life.

Because the book is gigantic (for a light novel), there are many twists and turns in the plot. It feels like 3-4 books were condensed down into a single volume, as so many things just occur, with no discernible reason in the beginning. However, by the end of the book, you start to get a feel for what’s about to occur.

This is just the first novel, and in Japan, there are 6 books total for this series (and another spinoff series ongoing). J-novel Club announced that they were going to start splitting up future novels due to their length, so there’s probably 10 volumes left to read.

I’ve certainly decided to stick with this series, and I recommend it! However, there are definitely some trigger warnings required for this book. It doesn’t linger on it, but the scenes are there.