Is there something seriously wrong with trying to find a boyfriend in a horror game? - Reviews

Okay, so I need to talk about this plot because honestly it threw me for a loop. The first thing that hit me was how completely disjointed this reading experience was. One moment I'm following Anxin's village entrepreneurship arc, the next I'm in Wen Nian's Shanghai tutoring subplot, and then BAM—Xia Miao transmigrates into a survival horror game. What the actual hell, author? But here's the thing: I couldn't put it down. Even though the narrative jumps around like a squirrel on caffeine, each thread has its own momentum. Anxin's storyline is the most grounded—she's got a clear goal (hire young men from her home village to work as truck drivers), she's got a plan, and she's executing it. The scene where she walks into Village Chief Hu Zhigang's house with zero preamble, just straight to business, was satisfying as hell. No wasted words. She's not here to borrow money like everyone assumes; she's here to build something. Wen Nian's thread is more subtle. She's observing, planning, calculating. The detail about her sketching out a stall plan while highlighting English textbooks for Yu Xiaoyan? That's the kind of multitasking that tells you everything about her character. And Xia Miao's opening chapter is pure adrenaline—dropped into a horror game with a mechanical voice giving her a mission. "Find the most dazzling man and conquer him" while a bandaged slasher is hunting survivors? The contrast between her cold, analytical approach and the sheer terror around her is delicious. The plot doesn't always feel coherent across these threads, but each one individually hooks hard. The real question is: when do these storylines collide? Because right now they feel like three separate novels stapled together, and I'm dying to know how they connect.

Okay so let me just say this plot twist had me wheezing. Xia Miao gets pushed literally into a blood-soaked slasher's path and what does she do? She doesn't scream. She doesn't beg. She looks at this guy who just dug a man's heart out and goes, "You're my type, now make me fall in love with you." And the absolute BEST part? The slasher BELIEVES he outsmarted her. He's over there scheming about playing along and then slicing her throat later, completely missing the fact that she already saw through his whole psycho routine. Meanwhile, the middle-aged guy Lin Gaoshan is strutting around claiming he outplayed the slasher like it was nothing, and we ALL know he just threw Xia Miao to the wolves. The dramatic irony is delicious. And then—plot twist within a plot twist—the shadow boy gets DUMPED by Xia Miao because she mistakes him for a pervert, and he's standing there going "wait, is something wrong with my head?!" The author is playing 4D chess with this narrative and I am HERE for it. The survival game structure is tight, the executioner world-building is creepy but fun, and the way the plot threads are starting to weave together? Chef's kiss.

The stakes in this story are layered in the best way. On the surface, it's a survival game—you get caught by an executioner, you die. Simple. But then Xia Miao flips the script and suddenly the executioners have their OWN conflicts. The bandaged boy is torn between his murderous nature and this bizarre new obsession with being pursued. He's literally pacing around gnawing his thumbnail, going back and forth between 'I'll kill her' and 'she dumped me!' The middle-aged man Lin Gaoshan represents a different kind of stake—his pride versus his survival. He threw Xia Miao to the slasher and is now lying to everyone about being skilled, but the other survivors see right through him. And the shadow boy? He's hiding in a storm drain, clearly not an executioner, clearly not a normal survivor, and he just got emotionally devastated by a girl who thought he was a pervert. The suspense is maintained because we don't fully understand the rules of this world yet. Who are the executioners? What's the system? What happens if you survive multiple nights? Every chapter raises new questions while answering old ones, and the conflict keeps escalating in unexpected directions.

The dialogue in this text is absolutely delicious and I need to discuss it at length because every character has a distinctly different voice and the author never lets them blur together. Lu Yan's dialogue is his personality on display. He starts with performative arrogance — 'Who's following you? This path isn't yours' — but it's so obviously a child's act that it's adorable. The way he counts down 'three... two... two point five' while threatening to eat her is comedic gold. He's trying to be terrifying and failing beautifully. And then when he says 'I don't even know how to write those two characters' about blushing — that's not just a joke, that's worldbuilding disguised as dialogue. He's a monster who doesn't have human literacy, and it's revealed in the most casual way possible. Xia Miao's voice is sharp, quick, and unimpressed. 'You're more trouble than you're worth. Just sit there and don't move an inch!' She doesn't soften for anyone. But her dialogue also has warmth buried underneath — 'Who else is going to make me fall in love at first sight?' delivered completely flatly while she's fixing flowers. That's a character who expresses care through annoyance. The supporting characters also have distinct voices. Fang Ke'ai sounds like an actual enthusiastic friend. Lin Gaoshan's dialogue is all suspicion and calculation. Even the headless woman's internal monologue about workplace bullying after death has a completely different comedic register from everyone else. The author's narrative voice is also worth praising — it's witty without being pretentious, observant without being clinical. Lines like 'the sound of magma bubbling with a hot gurgle-gurgle seemed to echo from deep within his chest' are exactly the kind of detail that makes prose feel alive.

I need to talk about this CP energy because WOW. The Slit-Mouthed Fiend—this absolute nightmare creature who gouges out eyes for lying—gets FLUSTERED by a compliment. Like, Xia Miao starts listing off all the things she finds attractive about him (his fingers, his waistline, his LEGS, his PALE SKIN) and this guy who has never experienced anything remotely kind in his existence just... melts. The text literally says his ears burned and he ended up smearing blood all over his bandages while trying to cool his face down. I was SCREAMING. And then the reverse happens when SHE gets dumped by the shadow boy and she's like "THE first person I ever liked is a PERVERT" and runs away clutching her "shattered maiden heart." The role reversal is everything. One moment she's the confident pursuer, the next she's the one whose heart is broken. Meanwhile the bandaged boy is having an absolute meltdown: "What gives her the right to unilaterally decide she's done dating me?!" This is the most chaotic romance setup I've ever encountered and I am OBSESSED. The tension between these two monsters-and-survivor dynamics is going to be absolutely electric.

I need to talk about the bone flowers. Not the plot function they serve, not the symbolism (though yes, please hold that thought), but the EMOTIONAL impact of a boy who can only express love through grotesque crafts made from his own world's debris, and the girl who treasures them anyway. Xia Miao says it so casually: 'Even if I don't like them, I still have to treasure them properly.' And Lu Yan's reaction — his heart literally tries to leap out of his chest and he has to physically hold it in with his hand — is the most vulnerable thing I've read in ages. This creature who terrifies everyone else is completely undone by one person valuing what he made. And then the hand-holding scene. Both of them turning away simultaneously, refusing to look at each other, while their fingers slide together palm to palm. The bandages on his face radiating heat. Her ears turning crimson. They've already kissed and yet THIS is what makes them short-circuit. The author understands something profound about first love: it's not the big moments that destroy you, it's the accidental intimacy. The first kiss confrontation is also peak emotional writing. Xia Miao's rage is justified and hilarious and heartbreaking all at once. She's protecting something real — her first kiss mattered to her, and his dismissal of it felt like a dismissal of HER. And his response, that tiny mosquito-whisper of 'that was my first kiss too,' completely disarms everything. I'm not crying, you're crying.

Let me just say this: the author does NOT mess around with pacing. One chapter you're melting over Lu Yan asking permission to kiss Xia Miao, the next you're watching a man try to gas-light and assault her in a storage room and I went from AHHHH to OH SHIT in approximately three seconds. The transition is jarring in the best possible way. We go from this incredibly tender, almost domestic scene — sharing sweet rolls, walking hand in hand, her scolding him about eating — and then BAM. Lin Gaoshan. Cardboard mask. Kerosene lantern. Gas mask. Dumbbell to the head. What I love about how this is structured is that the tender scene isn't just filler romance. It establishes what Xia Miao has to lose. We see her being genuinely caring — with Fang Ke'ai, with Lu Yan — and then we see what happens when someone tries to take advantage of that softness. The storage room scene hits harder BECAUSE we just spent time with her being human. The chapter breaks are also doing heavy lifting here. We get the Lu Yan/Xia Miao soft moment, then cut to Lin Gaoshan's POV — which is brilliant because it shows his desperation and gambling debts and growing fear of her, building dread before we even see him confront her. Then the storage room scene escalates fast: he traps her, she plays along, she hits him, the fire starts, he grabs her ankle, she's getting weak from the gas — and then CUT TO LU YAN IN A TREE. The conjoined twins showing up at the end is such a weird tonal shift that I actually laughed out loud. "The humans are giving off a rather appetizing stench of malice." Then Lu Yan drops from the branches like a superhero and the chapter ends. Cliffhanger? Absolutely. But also — what just happened? Is he going to save her? What are those twins? I need the next chapter NOW.

The stakes in this text operate on at least four simultaneous levels and the author never lets us forget any of them. Level one: survival. These are survivors in a slaughterhouse world. Monsters hunt them at night. People die. Lin Gaoshan's suspicion that Xia Miao has a secret survival item shows that even among the living, trust is scarce. The headless woman isn't just a scary monster — she's actively hunting people. The stakes are literal life and death. Level two: the romantic stakes. Lu Yan's threat to 'eat' Xia Miao is both a joke and a genuine danger. In this world, being eaten by a monster is a real threat, but it's also his way of saying 'I want you.' The scoring system creates a framework where romantic progression and physical survival are oddly linked — he can only 'eat' her (be with her?) when he reaches a hundred points. The romance and the danger are the same thing. Level three: identity and self-preservation. The text mentions that survivors who go against their assigned character profiles literally pop like balloons. This is a terrifying stake — not just dying, but being erased for being yourself. Xia Miao has to maintain her persona as a student while secretly navigating a slaughterhouse at night. The conflict between who she is and who she has to pretend to be is constant. Level four: the internal conflict. Lu Yan wants to help Xia Miao repair the flowers but is afraid of being despised. He wants to hold her hand but pretends he doesn't know how to blush. He wants to tell her he likes her but frames it as a threat to eat her. Every external conflict mirrors an internal one, and that's what makes the tension so unbearable and beautiful.