Kreis, the son of a powerful marquess, is actually a modern-day Japanese man who's been reincarnated into the world of a BL novel...that he wrote! Unfortunately, his memories don't return until after he's been branded a villain, executed as a lackey of the final boss, and sent back in time. Now that he has a second chance at life, Kreis swears revenge on the family that mistreated him and vengeance for the story's stunningly beautiful final boss: King Siegfried. For some reason, Kreis is overwhelmed with a desire to protect him, no matter the cost. Kreis knows that all the main characters of the story, including his younger brother—the story's original protagonist—will soon gather for his birthday party. With Siegfried's support, will Kreis finally break free from the story's predetermined path?

Romance Revived: An NPC Was the Final Boss's Love has story by Haru Sakura and illustrations by Mitsuya. English translation is done by Andria McKnight. Published by J-Novel Club (September 10, 2025).

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

It's always good practice to read a book all the way through before writing a review, and this is one of those novels that shows you why: had I stopped early on, I wouldn't have wound up liking it nearly as much. The start of Romance Revived, second entry in J-Novel Club's new Knight imprint for BL novels, is kind of a mess. Changing from third to first person, front-loading isekai tropes, and just generally feeling like you've read this story before when it was better, it doesn't precisely put its best foot forward. But once you get about halfway through, it becomes clear that author Haru Sakura may have been doing that on purpose, because once the bog standard reincarnation nonsense is out of the way, the story becomes something much sweeter: a romance about doing your damnedest to get things right.

The protagonist and narrator is an underselling Japanese novelist who, after his death, finds himself reborn as a doomed side character in the BL novel he wrote in an effort to sell more books. Kreis, as he's now known, is an unloved first son tossed aside by his father in favor of his nobler, purer brother. Or at least, that's how the story Kreis wrote back in Japan goes – the truth is something much darker, involving dark magic, evil rituals, and a whole lot of manipulation. Kreis is caught completely off guard by this, especially since he keeps having nightmares about his own death at the hands of the so-called protagonists, and he eventually realizes that his novel got the story very wrong. He's not keen on dying, but mostly he wants to save the young king, Kreis' childhood friend Seigfried. He believes that's because that's what Original Kreis wants him to do, but the truth is, of course, much more complicated.

Readers can easily spot the romance between Seigfried and Kreis a mile away, and it's not really a question of whether or not they'll eventually get together, it's how they're going to do it while circumventing the plot. Seigfried has a dark fate lurking in the background, while Kreis is working through his own trauma from at least two lives; his experience being an unloved orphan in Japan and a neglected and abused son in the novel combine to give him the drive to make a better world for children. This only grows more compelling as the book goes on, and by the time the full truths are beginning to come clear, the story is downright tense. It's an earned happy ending (complete with sex scene), and even knowing it's coming doesn't dilute the writing.

So give this one a chance. It may take some effort to get past the opening third, but in the end, it's very much worth it.

Lauren Orsini
Rating:

I'll give it this: Romance Revived: An NPC Was the Final Boss's Love is that rare light novel that cashes in on a book's worth of “will they or won't they” with a gratuitously explicit “they will, and multiple times at that.” It was a fitting culmination for this “throw everything at the wall and see if it sticks” style story. This pile of hastily duct-taped tropes lampshades its way through the standard isekai “reborn as an NPC” story beats by excusing its faults as being components of a “miserable story, less than a C-list tale” written by the main character himself. Late-stage twists kept me on my toes, but this story reveled in its own mediocrity.

“That would be me, the worst author ever.” When an unnamed Japanese man dies suddenly (we're never given a cause), he is somehow reborn into his own self-published BL novel. The MC tells us his novel was “roasted by readers” and it “doesn't even make sense,” and this is supposed to excuse any faults we notice going forward. What's more, he is reborn not as the hero or the villain of the story, but one of the villain's minions, Kreis von Louboutin, who is unceremoniously killed off partway through the original story. It's up to this version of Kreis to guarantee his own survival by ensuring the hero never rises to full power. Or is he trying to make sure the book's villain, King Seigfried, never becomes the Demon King? Kreis' motivations seem to waver throughout the book. Conveniently he's got a handy ace up his sleeve: Professor, a god in the form of a fluffy pet dog, who is there to offer guidance, but never to interfere. As Professor observes, Kreis immediately turns the tables on his abusive household staff, exposes the hero's nasty personality in front of the nobility, adopts a gang of orphans and teaches them how to make crepes, and effortlessly steals King Seigfried's heart. If any of this ever seems too easy, Kreis reminds us that the book he was reborn into was really bad!

The book gets less predictable about 70% of the way in. At this point there's a crucial scene that appears to be Kreis finally securing his safety—only for him to discover that the faction he thought was his enemy was only an appetizer. A time loop ensues until he can iron it out, and in this section it felt like I was reading a different, better book. Finally there's a decidedly hardcore happily ever after. It was graphic by this genre's standards, but by An Archive of Our Own terms I'd say the sex was vanilla. Kreis says, “The imperfections [in the story] left enough gaps for me to exploit now that I was a character in it—not that I was trying to justify how sloppy I had been back then.” No, I'd argue that Kreis is very much justifying this story's sloppiness, and that's its greatest weakness.