She lost her fiancé, her sister, and her position as saint in one breath. Is nothing sacred anymore?!

Evelyn has spent most of her life dutifully performing her role as the saint and keeping the country safe with prayers and healing magic. But everything comes crashing down when her ex-fiancé, the crown prince, exiles her and names her incompetent sister as the new saint. With no money and no practical skills to speak of, she has her work cut out for her if she wants to find her place in the world.

Things start to look up after a mysterious young boy offers to help her make a living. Her experience with healing nets her a quick paycheck, and the people aren't shy about sharing their devotion for her—she even gets proposed to! As discontent spreads over the prince's folly and adoring fans flock to her side, Evelyn must navigate political intrigue, her newly realized fame, and unexpected romance in the air.

Even Exiled, She's Still the Beloved Saint! has a story by Harunadon and art by Kurodeko. English translation is done by Camilla L. Published by J-Novel Club (January 7, 2026).

Erica Friedman
Rating:

If the words “What!?” and “Huh?” did not exist, then neither could the entirety of this light novel. I had read the first volume of the manga, so I knew the basic plot. I was actually looking forward to reading the rest of the story...

…the rest of the story was not good.

Not even “not great,” this was very not good. Every character had to be grossly dumb, the misunderstandings get more and more forced, and every character becomes an over-exaggeration of all their fetishistic admiration of Evelyn, while she bumbles through the story, obsessed that she is old and useless at 28 years old.

There is a scene just past halfway when every character suddenly has a character-shifting confession, which they blurt out over one meal. It is all supposed to be fun and funny, but from that point, my eyes just kept rolling over and over, and the star rating for this book dropped slowly. And then all the dozens of priests hilariously all fall down the stairs at the same time because they are soooooo happy Evelyn is back, and my brain just broke.

I couldn't figure out what had happened. Yes, Evelyn is absurdly naïve in the first half of the story and has extraordinarily low self-esteem, but it wasn't the worst thing I'd ever read. Then I read the author's note, where they say that their editor wanted the book to be funnier. Ah. I see. That's about where the few strong plot points are set aside, and the main characters are suddenly “humorously” nosebleeding, tripping, threatening murder, and drooling over Evelyn. That editor ruined the story, and I resent it. I'd suggest sticking with the manga for this one, but after the characters start nosebleeding and drooling, it won't be all that much better.

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

Harunadon is one of my favorite light novel authors simply because none of their works are remotely the same. This entry into their oeuvre is a parody of the increasingly popular lady saint subgenre of fantasy. While some books in that line are also isekai, this one is not – it's a straightforward story about a kingdom that overuses its saint and the moron who decides that he wants to get rid of her so he can put her half-sister in her place. And of course, the saint herself is too good and pure to see pretty much anything that's going on around her.

Played straight, this would have been vastly annoying. Evelyn is so good and pure that she's unbelievable, plus there's a character who sits on the border of two of my least favorite tropes, the predatory lesbian and the obsessed superfan. But luckily this is a parody, so most of the characters' obnoxious traits are played for laughs. Evelyn has spent twenty-three years basically locked up in the Basilica where old men fawned over her, so when her ex-fiancé Crown Prince Alex – who is demoted to “Clown Prick Alex” over the course of the novel – boots her out, she's utterly helpless. She's not stupid, however, and realizes that she can probably use her healing magic to support herself…if she had any idea how to go about doing so. She's cheerfully innocent rather than suffocatingly sweet, and Kira, a boy she accidentally solicits while trying to ask if she can heal him, recognizes that without him, she'd be dead in a ditch or worse.

And Evelyn does learn over the course of the novel. Everyone does, actually, even annoying characters like Europa and Alex, although it must be said that they don't grow nearly as much as the others. (Mary, Evelyn's sister, is a lost cause.) The longer Evelyn spends out in the world, specifically with the family of her suitor Lord Theodore, the more she figures out about the way it works. She's just been so sheltered for most of her life that she has more to learn than most people, and Kira and Theodore are remarkably patient with her. It's nice to see, and it really sets them apart from other people Evelyn encounters; Europa, for example, never is able to see her as a person. Granted, that's part of her character, but it's still an interesting distinction.

As the book goes on, it gets sillier and sillier. That makes it very easy to read, and Harunadon does have a good understanding of how silly things can get without losing the reader. Given how diverse their offerings are as an author, I can't just say that if you enjoyed their other works you'll like this one, but if you're starting to feel like the saint genre has it coming, this might be worth picking up.