Is How I Remarried That Monster Worth Reading? Review & Where to Read

Overview

How I Remarried That Monster starts from a genuinely dark premise. Dianna Brienne once freed an abused slave on her family's estate, only to have him return years later as a vengeful king who married her, punished her for it, and let her die miserable. A second chance sends her back to age twelve, well before any of that happens, and the story becomes a race to defuse the very cruelty she isn't supposed to know about yet. It's the regression-romance formula stripped to its rawest version: instead of getting revenge on people who already wronged her, the heroine has to out-maneuver the person she knows will eventually wrong her, while he has no idea what's coming.

What it does well

The hook works. Knowing exactly how bad things get in the original timeline gives every early scene between Dianna and Guiscard a low hum of dread that a normal childhood-romance setup wouldn't have — you're watching two kids interact and bracing for the version of them that hasn't happened yet. Kidari Studio's art team, illustrated here by Jeokmok, delivers the moody, richly inked webtoon look the studio's roster is known for: full color panels, strong character acting in close-ups, and lavish costume and set design that sells the prestige-drama-with-a-curse-on-it tone the writing is going for.

For readers who specifically like the dark, toxic-romance corner of Korean webtoons — power imbalance, a slow-burn redemption arc, a lead who has to earn his way back from genuinely awful behavior — this hits the notes that subgenre exists for. Season one also closes out a real arc with a beginning, middle, and end, which is more than a lot of ongoing webtoons manage.

Where it falls short

The central relationship is the sticking point, and it's not a small one. Guiscard's crimes in the original timeline are severe enough that the story asks a lot of goodwill from readers to accept his redemption on the terms it offers, and it leans hard on Dianna's own stubborn refusal to just talk to him as the engine for a lot of the drama — a device that gets frustrating well before chapter 40. Community reaction reflects this split: the series sits at a rare sub-4 average on MangaUpdates, and a lot of the pushback is specifically about how the "villain redeemed by love" arc is handled, not about pacing or art.

It's also mid-hiatus between seasons right now, so anyone picking it up is reading a complete first act with no confirmed date for the rest.

Verdict

This one only really works if you're already the reader for morally messy, slow-burn Korean dark romance. Everyone else should skip it, and the reception so far backs that up.