Not-Sew-Wicked Stepmom has an odd history in English. Some years ago, Korean novel translators WordExcerpt released the source novel as I’m Only a Stepmother, but my Daughter is Just Too Cute! as both a Kindle e-book and serialized on their site. (There may also have been an audiobook.) It has since vanished from both places, although if you bought the e-book, it will still be available on your account and device. The manhwa is available digitally serialized on Tapas and in book form from Ize Press, and as of this writing, that’s the only way to read the story unless you bought the novel when it was available and squirreled it away.
With that said, Not-Sew-Wicked Stepmom is an absolute delight despite the content warning, which doesn’t appear until volume three. The story is a riff on the fairy tale best known as Snow White, using the variant where Snow White’s nemesis is her stepmother rather than her birth mother. The stepmother in question is Abigail, the second wife of King Sabrian. Rumor has it that Sabrian was so in love with Miriam, his first wife, that he actively resents Abigail and declines to share a bed with her because he can’t get over Miriam. That turns out to be true, but in the most upsetting of ways – volume three lets us know that Sabrian was not a willing participant in his daughter’s conception, and this has resulted in perfectly understandable lasting trauma. When he finally asks Abigail to do the math of how old he was when Blanche was born, and she realizes that he was fifteen, everything from the previous two volumes falls into place, and volume three marks the turning point in the story and the point where it becomes very difficult to put the series down.
Not that the first two books aren’t good. The story opens with Abigail realizing that she is Abigail, and not Baekhap, a Korean woman who worked in children’s fashion before dying of overwork. She’s not quite sure what to do with her new lease on life until she meets Blanche, her stepdaughter, and recognizes that she’s living in a world very similar to eighteenth-century Europe. Blanche, she notes, is small for her age of eleven. The dresses her caretaker puts into her are merely miniatures of adult clothing, as was common at the time, including restrictive undergarments, which would have been panniers and a corset. Armed with her twenty-first-century knowledge, Abigail is aghast, especially when she realizes that her caretaker is also putting Blanche on a diet to fit in; the girl is so small because of malnutrition. At this moment, Abigail decides that nothing is worth a little girl being tortured and leaps into action: she’ll take over Blanche’s care whether Sabrian likes it or not, and that means that he’s going to have to interact with his only child and learn how to be a father.
It’s worth mentioning that Abigail isn’t a bulldozer in this. Even before Sabrian reveals his history with Miriam to her, she understands that he’s not going to be comfortable with the changes and makes it clear that he’s not obliged to do anything extra with her. She just wants to help Blanche grow up healthy, and she knows that parental love is one of the things that will help. Abigail is fully aware that the previous owner of her body wasn’t a nice person, and she knows that she’s now got a terrible case of resting villainess face. But she’s willing to put in the work to show Blanche that she loves her, which is hands-down the most rewarding aspect of this story. Both Blanche and Baekhap know what it feels like to be overlooked and feel neglected and unloved, and they find joy in building a relationship with each other. Sabrian is baffled by this (especially in the third volume, where he becomes a more prominent character), but he also is fascinated by the implication that he would like this for himself as well – he’s just afraid to ask for it.
At its heart, Not-Sew-Wicked Stepmom is a story about building a family. It’s largely lighthearted, which does make Sabrian’s backstory stick out like the proverbial sore thumb, but it also knows when to be serious. Everyone is earnestly working towards what Abigail envisions for them, just in their own way, and watching Blanche blossom as she feels more and more secure in her stepmother’s love is rewarding. We can see her tentative steps toward her father as she learns to trust that not every hand she reaches out will be slapped aside, and as fairy tale fracturing goes, this is a very good one. Even when a rival rears her head, author Iru knows how to handle it without making it feel like too much of a retread of manhwa‘s greatest hits, and it’s just a very well-put-together story overall.
Mo9Rang’s art also does a beautiful job of incorporating historical elements. The fashion is consistent with Marie-Antoinette’s lifetime, with the names of two prominent gown styles of the day dropped, robe à la française and chemise à la reine. Mo9Rang draws these to be recognizable to any fashion historian. If the panniers look more like 19th-century cage crinolines rather than the hip-based 18th-century panniers (the latter going out to the sides rather than perfectly round), that’s still better than we typically get. The vibrant colors help to bring the story to life in a way that doesn’t just feel like they’re applied for better digital reading.
Whether or not you’re a fan of Snow White, this is a series worth picking up. It has elements of romance, but it’s much more about finding a family and building a life together, seen through the lens of both the fairy tale and court life in the 18th century. If you were lucky enough to find the novel when it was available, this is a great complement to it, but whatever your access to the original, this is a series worth reading.
Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. Yen Press, BookWalker Global, and J-Novel Club are subsidiaries of KWE.
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