An excellent light novel! The cover illustration is very beautiful and immediately drew me in. The story is unique and the characters were very captivating. I would like more depth to the setting of the book and the history but overall I think there is plenty of room for this to grow and bloom through the oncoming volumes!

This book was so captivating and had my interest and attention from the first page. I really love the concept of the story, and how intertwined the past and present are. I can't wait to see what more volumes will have in store. I don't want to say goodbye to these characters.

Thank you NetGalley for an arc of this book.

The cover caught my eye, I love the illustration!

The description seemed interesting and so I requested to receive an e-arc to review!

Overall, it had an interesting premise. It was nice to know more about memories of Ionia. However, I felt like the way it's written didn't feel like it flowed that well. It seems as if some parts came to abrupt stops and interrupted the flow of the story with other parts from the past.

It has potential but I would have loved more depth and connection to the story, perhaps something to make it more engaging especially in the beginning. The beginning in general plays a big part in the desire to continue reading until the end.

🦋 BL light novel Review 🦋
▪︎ Name: You Can Have My Back Vol.1
▪︎ Genre: BL
▪︎ Author: Minami Kotsuna, Hitomi Hitoyo
▪︎ Rating: 3.5 ⭐️
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🦋 Thoughts 🦋
There are TW associated with this novel so please search up the TW before proceeding! The novel is a reincarnation story and the mc dies and his memories is inherited or transferred to a person who has been born a day after he passes away. Thus, there is a large age gap between the MC and the ML. The book itself is messy and has a lot of drama and there are some sketchy scenes in this novel. But the drama had me hooked ngl and also the political stuff was interesting. The art is also great and I liked how the light novel had the illustration in it! Excited for Vol.2!
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🦋 Tags 🦋
#youcanhavemybackvol1lightnovel #blrecommendations #blmangarecommendation #blmanga #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #booksta #bookish #books #booktok #booktoker #booklover #manga #bookreview #bookreviewer #mangarecommendation #yenpress #bllightnovel #blnovel #lightnovel #lightnovelrecommendations #netgalley #yenon

I really enjoyed this quick read for me i couldnt put it down i would read again and again. The storyline was cute and the cover is amazing.

Alas, this one simply was for me. Lots of issues with consent, and so forth. I appreciate the opportunity to check this out in advance, but I can't really recommend it overall.

This wasn't my cup of tea, a bit difficult to follow with the swapping timelines and such. The lack of consent for a lot of this made for an uncomfy read.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advance copy!

Thank you Yen Press for allowing me to read and review this title! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I really, really wanted to enjoy this one but I couldn't finish it. I stopped about half way to give it a chance but the translation didn't work for me. The story felt too jumbled and I couldn't follow along very well. I don't always read light novels but this one was one of my most anticipated reads so of course I wanted to request to read it. Sadly it wasn't as amazing as I wanted it to be so I have to DNF it.

2 stars

It is rare that I ever decide to not finish a book, even a book I don't like. But I just could not with this one. I pretty much dislike everything about it. The writing style is not my favorite. I dislike all of the time jumps. There are too many things that are either not explained or are mentioned and then explained in an off hand way later. It made for really difficult reading. And I absolutely hate that Leorino is a literally child and everyone is obsessed with how beautiful he is. There is a major ick factor with the age gaps that I just could not deal with even if nothing happens until Leorino is technically an adult. Just no thank you to all of it.

Oh, I did not enjoy this.

From the get-go we have issues with consent. This is a pervasive issue throughout the story. Leorino is not even a typical damsel in distress archetype, he is absolutely lacking agency in basically his entire life. I am still unsure of he was supposed to be a reincarnation of Ionia or just a vessel that held his memories. Either way this made the "romance" feel just... wrong. The rest of the plot was lost to me among these issues. Whatever potential political intrigue was going on was completely overshadowed by these questionable and sometimes, downright bad tropes.

The art was absolutely beautiful, don't get me wrong, but this was definitely not the story I expected and it definitely was not for me.

*My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC

⭐⭐⭐⭐ Not what I expected, but it doesn't disappoint.

When I chose this ARC, I thought it was a graphic novel/manga, so my first surprise when I started reading was to realize that it wasn't. The second, in a long list of surprises, was the prologue… I think they should put a content warning so that readers don't stumble upon these kinds of scenes inadvertently. I'm not referring to the explicit content, I mean the no-con.

Third surprise… I thought it would be a novel with a renaissance plot, but it's not like that, at least not completely. Ionia and Leorino are two different people, except that Rino has Ionia's memories and while he sleeps he can access them and learn about Ionia's life.

I liked that Rino found a way to express his thoughts and desires despite the fact that the people around him insisted on pigeonholing him into stereotypes or making him fit into their own versions of what he should be.

Even though I'm not a fan of political intrigues, that part of the story was quite interesting, at times I got quite angry because certain situations could have been avoided if the characters stopped keeping important information to themselves. But hey, there's nothing we can do more than wait and see how it all unfolds.

I loved the illustrations at the beginning of the book. Many things remained pending, but I suppose they will be resolved in the following volumes.

I received this arc in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately this wasn't the book for me. I stopped reading around the page 90 mark. Far too many people were fawning over the main character who was currently twelve years old and it made me feel really uncomfortable, especially with that opening prologue.

It had potential and I loved the idea of Leorino being born with Ionia's memories but it fell short and I found myself pulling faces at some of the things other characters were saying or doing.

Another gripe I had was how many times we were told the marquis was the secretary to the interior. Once or twice is all you need

The cover made me totally curious, but unfortunately the story could not convince me. The characters remained unknown to me. The story just couldn't grab me, so I didn't finish the book.

Thanks for NetGalley for the eARC!
I'm not used to reading light novels, so I don't know if some of my issues is with specific book, or with this type of literature.

My first surprise was the extremely spicy prologue. Because of this, I expected a book with a completely different mood (aka very hot) than what I got, and even though I didn't go into it because of the adult content, I thought of the almost complete lack of consensual sex as a disappointment.

The emphasis is on consent, as there is plenty of typical gay-Japanese-written-for-girls non-consent flirting/harassment, and luckily we wait until our main hero reaches adulthood, but he still remains a prime damsel-in-distress. Leorinos unearthly beauty was so often talked about that my theory is that it's his Power and no one knows about it, but if not, they're horribly dehumanizing / infantilizing this kid. He tries to fight hard against the stereotype that was imposed on him, striving for independency and aiming for jobs, but nobody else gives a damn about his trying.

The plot is filled with betrayal and political intrigue, which was surprisingly entertaining, but here we touch on my other big complaint about the book: it is a book cut in half. It technically doesnt have an ending. No storylines started are closed. It's like it was decided that 464 page of high fantasy with hot dudes is enough, and put a dramatic scene at the end with a To be continued text.

I'm not going to read any further into the series, but honestly the illustrations alone (even though theres only a handful of them) made it worth the read. Holy moly, how beautiful are all the bachelors here. Kudos to Hitomi Hitoyo!

I really liked the premise of You Can Have My Back. The story idea was intriguing and I found the main characters interesting, especially Leorino/Ionia. There were a few nice illustrations included too. However, the story fell down a little for me in the execution. There was so much telling, with frequent pauses in the story to share chunks of history/backstory, and some of that was also repetitive, with the same information simply regurgitated in different ways. That irritated me and pulled me out of the moment. If I had an easy opportunity to read on in the series, I might do so, but I wasn't so invested that I am desperate to know what will happen next. As such, I am giving this book three stars.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I’m always very excited to be getting more boy’s love/danmei fiction, especially when that fiction is of the reincarnation/ rebirth nature or features intriguing magic like this one! Unfortunately, you can’t love them all! I know that most people will have an issue with an age gap that pits a sheltered teenager who’s just come of age with an older established individual at the head of a country’s military and also a prince! And though there were extenuating circumstances for that, the age gap wasn’t even the worst of the issues this book had, the wavering plot, the cosseting of the main lead, the inappropriate overtures to him even as a child, the hyper fixation of the author and every single person in this book on his appearance, there is a lot going on here, plus the story is clearly going to take several volumes.

I did like the magic system here and the plot does have some potential that will hopefully be the focus of future books. I will probably try at least one more volume but as for recommending this work, I think one should read a sample of this work and be very aware of the TW before purchasing this work.

I'll be honest, this is not a type of story I really enjoy, and while I finished it, there was a lot I didn't really like. However, a lot of this is personal taste. The main character is Leorino, a young noble who happens to have been born with the memories of Ionia, a knight who died in the previous war. While this sounds like a rebirth set up, it's made very clear that Rino simply holds these memories, and is not Ionia himself, the two are separate people. My main issue with this story is Rino's character. He's someone who's been sheltered his whole life due to issues outside of his control and while he starts multiple times he wishes to be independent etc. the plot is setup in a way that almost always takes his agency away. Due to his looks (which are harped on constantly) he's a target, and it's made abundantly clear what people think of him through several often uncomfortable scenes. My second biggest issue is with Gravis, the ml, who was in love with Ionia and is currently 37, 19 years older than Rino. There are some good things here though, I liked the interactions between Rino and his family members, and the translation is fantastic. I do think that volume one was too slow while things were explained and setup, and that going forward the plot will be a bit more engaging. I'm not sure i'll read more, but I can see lots of light novel readers being interested in this story.

The art work is amazingly good. But the downside is the plot didn't work out for me! I tried really hard to love it...
Thankyou netgalley for the ARC!

The first page throws you directly into what reads like a rape scene, and a vast amount of gaslighting, which was unfortunately very off putting, when you've not even had a chance to settle into the characters and their personalities.
The whole book also suffers from a bad case of telling and not showing, which is unfortunate because you never really feel like you understand that characters and what drives them as you're just pulled along by your sleeve like an errant child.

There's also some cross dressing that seems a bit odd, as there's no real reason besides a mother's 'I said so,' and the language seems more like a manuscript for a drawn boy love, because I keep missing the character's emotions, and they never get 'fleshed' out and tangible.

The plot is very watery, and before I hit the 100th page I had lost interest entirely, in both plot and characters and the romantic intrigue couldn't ignite anything for me either.

I read the entire thing in a little under four hours, and because the language is so simplistic, what should have taken me at least a whole night, took me an evening.

I liked the premise of the book, and the whole reincarnation could be a really good story, but it is unfortunately lost in the info dump we as readers are continuously faced with.

The idea is good, but the plot, and more importantly for me, the characters need some personality and some life.

The interaction the characters have with each other also seem very stilted, ex. where Gravis confesses to Ionia that no one has ever asked him to be his friend, and Ionia answers with: "I mean, your eyes were so sparkly, I couldn't help myself." Which reads weirdly, when your friend/lover just confessed no one has ever wanted to just be his friend, and your supposed friend then confesses that he wanted to be your friend because of 'sparkly eyes'. It just seems shallow.