Is How to Win My Husband Over Worth Reading? Review & Where to Read

Quick facts
Format	Webtoon, 137 chapters
Run	2021–present · ongoing
Community score	AniList 8.1 · MangaUpdates 8.2
Content	Themes of past abuse and trauma, handled without graphic depiction
Where to read	Tapas — official

Overview

Rudbeckia de Borgia already died once, in a plane crash in her old life. She wakes up as someone else entirely: a minor villainess from a historical novel, one whose story ends with her husband, Iske van Omerta, killing her. Now she has to survive a marriage to the exact man fated to end her life, all while navigating the Borgia family's dysfunction and a court that expects her to fail. Her plan is simple in theory and difficult in practice — convince Iske, his family, and the whole country that she's harmless, and maybe, along the way, convince herself she's safe.

Adapted from a web novel by Spice&Kitty with art by SIRU, the series is published through Tapas by CARROTOON, running since 2022 across multiple seasons and currently sitting at over 130 episodes.

What it does well

What sets this apart from the crowded villainess-isekai field is how seriously it takes Rudbeckia's fear. This isn't a heroine who shrugs off her doomed fate with quips and confidence from page one — her trauma from her old life and her terror of Iske carry real weight, and the story paces her growth like something closer to actual healing than a switch flipped by the plot. That choice gives the whole series a steadier emotional core than most of its genre peers.

Iske's arc mirrors that patience. Rather than one big romantic turn, his shift from a cold, dangerous husband to someone who genuinely pays attention to Rudbeckia is built out of small, specific moments, which makes the relationship feel like it's actually being earned rather than assumed by genre convention.

The Borgia family's dysfunction is doing real work too — it gives Rudbeckia's situation stakes that extend past the central marriage plot, since her own home is a source of ongoing danger she has to manage alongside everything else. And SIRU's art moves comfortably between the story's tense court and family confrontations and its quieter, more vulnerable character moments, which keeps the tonal range from feeling disjointed.

Where it falls short

The core premise — waking up as a doomed villainess and having to out-maneuver your own fate — is extremely familiar territory at this point, and readers who've already read several similar series may find the setup itself unremarkable, even if the execution stands out.

The series' season-and-hiatus release pattern means reading it as it airs involves real gaps between chunks of story, which can make momentum harder to hold onto than a series with a steady weekly release. And a handful of supporting characters in the court and the Borgia household are introduced with real menace only to get comparatively little follow-through in later chapters.

Verdict

How to Win My Husband Over takes a familiar villainess-isekai premise and grounds it in real emotional stakes, making Rudbeckia's healing as central as her romance. If you want a slow-burn royal romance that takes its heroine's trauma seriously, this is one of the stronger versions of that story currently running; if you'd rather read something already finished or faster-paced, the ongoing hiatus schedule is worth knowing about going in.