Xu Mi Yu was the unwanted third daughter born to parents desperate for a son. Seen as a burden, she was neglected and abused, shaping her into an extremely subservient woman with rock-bottom self-esteem. Her efforts to please her narcissistic mother and earn a shred of parental love were constantly rebuffed, leading to more physical and verbal abuse.

The story kicks off with Xu Mi Yu's mother, a manipulative succubus, demanding luxury hotel accommodations during a visit, forcing her daughter and son-in-law out of their own home. When the hotel proves more comfortable, the mother insists on staying while her family returns to the house she's ransacked and looted. Xu Mi Yu's husband, understandably fed up with her family's entitlement, has an affair which Xu Mi Yu discovers at this very hotel the next day.

Showing an uncharacteristic spark of backbone, Xu Mi Yu divorces him despite unanimous opposition from her leech family members hoping to keep mooching off his income. But her small victory is short-lived as she's swiftly scammed out of her divorce settlement. With no money, career, or supportive family, she ends up as a hotel maid at the site of her marital immolation.

If the relentless misery inflicted on Xu Mi Yu wasn't torturous enough, her insufferable colleagues make reading this story a masochistic exercise. They bully, gaslight, and sabotage her at every turn, yet she's expected to magically become an assertive leader who wins them over through sheer niceness. Their execrable behavior has little to no consequences.

But the biggest travesty is the writer daring to label this reeking dung heap a "sweet romance" by pairing the emotionally battered Xu Mi Yu with a scumbag male lead. This loathsome rich boy rages at her with a demented visceral hatred from their first meeting, judging her as a jilted pathetic woman refusing to let go of her philandering husband like his mother. He then spends half the book verbally assaulting, degrading, and ruthlessly tormenting Xu Mi Yu while obliviously looking down on everyone from his ivory tower of privilege.

Even after they have s*x after both being drugged, he treats the heroine with repulsed contempt the next day. As if his torrent of verbal and emotional abuse wasn't horrific enough, he repeatedly sets her up to suffer for his twisted amus**ent under the guise of "helping" her. His ego is so massively inflated, he cannot fathom acknowledging when he's grievously wronged her based on arrogant misperceptions. Rather than have an ounce of self-awareness of his monstrous bullying, he chronically rationalizes and justifies his despicable behavior.

Tragically, up to where I could stomach reading, this emotionally stunted man-child showed zero growth or remorse for his incalculable cruelty toward Xu Mi Yu and others. The prospect of her hard-won journey of self-actualization being "rewarded" by falling in love with her tormentor is not just a ludicrous injustice, but a sickening romanticization of abuse that had me furiously tempted to hurl my iPad against the wall.