Crazy takes in the reviews here.

Fluffangstsm has quite an unrealistic and immature view on the nature of ML's "harmless prank". I'm also wondering if they even read the whole novel or if they themself is suffering from memory loss, because they got a number of concrete facts wrong (things that are literally written word for word in the text). I would recommend looking at Empathatic's review as they have already pointed them all out.

Now as for my personal take:

I want you to put yourself in the MC's shoes. Imagine you've... more>> woken up in a hospital bed, fairly bruised and concussed with your head all messed up, and some random stranger who you do not recognise at all claims to be your partner.

And then you find out that you've lost your memories and have zero evidence that this man is your partner, and he also acts rather suspiciously uncaring and disingenuous with you - but he keeps up the act and still says he's your lover.

No one around you seems to know about your secret relationship - let alone that you both are supposedly gay, so you can't verify the truth and out yourself. Yet, you also feel horrible to break up this secret relationship and hurt this man's feelings, if he truly is the love of your life.

He keeps insisting that your relationship is real, so much so that coupled with your guilt of forgetting him, you eventually successfully fool yourself into believing that he really is your partner. You fully love and trust him now.

A few months go by, and everything suddenly comes crashing down when your memories come back, and you discover the downright bone-chilling truth.

It was all a lie. This man has been manipulating and gaslighting you, laughing behind your back this whole time as he fed you lie after lie.

He never really loved you to begin with, and this was all just one sick 3-months long "prank". And the worst part of it all was that it started because he hated you and wanted to get back at you. You don't even get to discover the truth through his own words, but through your memories coming back on their own accord. God knows how long he would've kept this "prank" going and kept you from the truth, had you never regained your memories back.

And at the end of this whole debacle, he has the gall to tell you, "Oh, well yeah I didn't love you at the start - and though I do kinda regret doing this whole prank after all this time of being in this fake relationship, I really did end up falling in love with you! And you love me too right? So who cares whether what we had was real or not, it's sorta real now! Let's date for realsies!"

...I'm sorry, what? I would be bloody traumatised from this whole thing and have no idea how to react, even if I did end up "falling in love" with this guy. Someone I thought I loved took advantage of me when I was at my most vulnerable, and just did it for the LOLs and to get back at me??

Because this novel was written as a romcom, it has a rather light-hearted tone throughout each chapter. But if you ignore the light-heartedness, don't you think it actually sounds more like a horror novel?

I think introspective readers would want to carefully reflect on these thoughts.

Anyway, I do want to mention that I'm only writing all of this out because young and naive readers may look at Fluff's review and think that this kind of relationship built on lies is okay - but in the real world if something like this happened to you, it is an absolutely unhealthy relationship and you do not want to be with someone who is willing to lie and gaslight you for months for their own benefit.

Now you may be wondering, "Okay so you're saying all this, but you completed reading this whole novel?" And yes! I fully read this novel knowing what I was getting into, and enjoyed every page. I frankly enjoyed the story more through the lens of a thriller, but I did appreciate the romance aspects of it too. But I can still distinguish that this is a fictional story that is safe to explore through text, keeping in mind that in a realistic scenario, this is totally f*cked up.

Please readers, you can turn off your brain when you choose to read stories like these, but keep some semblance of rationality and realism in the back of your mind. You may be harming other readers (and yourself!) when you try and justify a character's horrible actions like this. <<less

*Edit*

To Fluffangstsmut

I read the whole novel before you even posted your review. I didn't feel the need to come back and change the rating, but because you wanted to "call someone out", I decided to clarify. You have a few major and very important things wrong in your review:

1. It is NOT a harmless prank to convince someone they're gay and manipulate their feelings when they're severely injured and trying to recover. LYX came out to his brother. Coming out of the closet can be emotionally painful and sometimes people might even react violently.
2. SJ DID intend to hurt him, that was the entire point of the prank. He relishes in the idea that LYX will be angry, hurt, and upset when he regains his memory.
3. SJ was NOT genuine about the relationship at first. He very much only wanted to piss off and hurt LYX. It doesn't matter what his intent is later. The fact that he didn't think about the consequences of his actions because SJ was thinking it would only take two weeks for LYX to get better doesn't excuse him from any of the consequences. Even if LYX did get better in two weeks, that's still enough time to cause a lot of hurt to someone. Emotionally or even physically if things go wrong while coming out of the closet to friends and family.
4. Later in the story (after I posted my review and read further) you find out that SJ pulled a pretty horrible prank on LYX in high school.
   Spoiler

   Because SJ was given a wasabi flavored candy by a friend and was told it was matcha flavored, knowing that LYX can't handle spicy food even less, he convinces his friend to do the same to LYX. Then when LYX is struggling and about to spit the candy out, he forcefully holds his mouth shut causing him even more pain and embarrassment.

   [collapse]
5. Because of points 1, 2, 3, and 4 SJ is a bad person for his behavior.

I finished it... if SJ had acted a bit better before things began to change, I might have been more inclined to give this more stars. He improves a lot later, but the start... is incredibly ugly. Because of the manipulation, gaslighting, and mistreatment, I still rate this one star. Maybe if the author went back and rewrote the first half of the story to make SJ just a tiny bit more likeable, I might have been convinced by you to give this at least one more star. Unfortunately, that's not the story I read.

*End edit*

It's a multiple pov story, mainly switching between the two male leads... But honestly, after about 10+ chapters, Shang Jue is a horrible person.

Discovering that Lu Yuxing has amnesia, he starts off convincing him that he's his boyfriend, and then continuously treats him like crap despite the fact that LYX repeatedly tries to figure things out. He manipulates his illness to mock him, forgets about him until he's bored and wants to amuse himself with more mockery, and only thinks of himself the up to that point.

LYX is legitimately suffering, struggling to come back from losing three years of his life. He tries to get his grades on track, tries to reform his relationships with the people around him, and even admits to his brother that he's gay. With all of that... I just felt horrible for him and hated SJ even more.

I'm guessing SJ improves as a person later in the story, but it's hard to keep reading with such a self-centered person. Not even a shred of sympathy for a person that is seriously injured and struggling, just pure malice and amusement at tricking him up to that point.

I kinda don't want to keep reading to see him be "redeemed" later in the story.

Someone just rated this 1 star saying that Shang Jue is a terrible person, only judging him based on after reading only 10+ chapters in the story.

WELL I DISAGREE 😊

You say Shang Jue treats him like crap, manipulating him because he has amnesia. But if you actually read the story, you'd see that Shang Jue just played a harmless prank. He was genuine during the time he pretended their relationship. He never really intended to hurt him because he thought that Lu Yuxing will recover his memories after two weeks.... more>> But it lasted for months. And during those months, Shang Jue had already truly fell for Lu Yuxing and wanted to continue the relationship for real and plans to tell him the truth.

When Lu Yuxing recovered his memories, Shang Jue thought that it was over between them however, Lu Yuxing was only a bit upset but never really planned to break up with Shang Jue. Because he too, had also fallen for him.

Please read the entire story. 😊 Thanks! <<less

So sweet, my tooth is aching!

Doting gong (Lu Yuxing) x prideful shou (Shang Jue)

Shang Jue reaps what he sows and watching him begrudgingly melt from MC's actions is adorable 🥰 Their chemistry and tension is chef's kiss

... more>> Onto the extras!

Edit: Extras is an AU where Shang Jue never said "your boyfriend". They go separate ways and meet again in their late 20s. More introspective and mature than the main story--two lonely bachelors find solace in each other's company.

As someone who was going to drop this novel after reading the negative reviews, I highly recommend giving it a shot and forming your own opinion! This became one of my top 3 novels :-) <<less

If you're looking forward for secret love, then this is not for you!

This is a literal enemies to lovers type trope, in which both ML and MC hated each other very much in the first few chapters until MC got amnesia!

This is a good, warm story.

Despite the fact that at the beginning MC behaves like an a**hole, ML still accepts all his actions - and not because he is weak, but because he accepts him as a person, with these shortcomings.

MC is a little playful, a little cruel, but more like a child who does not understand the consequences of his actions. And although from a moral point of view his actions are wrong, even being a villain, he does not want to cross the line and cause unnecessary pain... more>> to MC.

Don’t worry, this is a comedy, so there is no humiliation or darkness, nothing extreme happens. On the contrary, this is a very funny and kind story, with a great development of the characters' relationships.

For me, the most interesting thing was how their feelings changed from real enemies to lovers.

To summarize: a funny sweet story, where MC is a little evil at first, but gradually changes and it turns out that for his lover he is a cute little thing with claws.^_^ <<less