Is Secretly Strong and Searching for My Daddy Worth Reading? Review & Where to Read

Quick facts
Format	Webtoon (shōjo), 36 chapters
Run	2026–present · ongoing
Community score	AniList 7.8 · MangaUpdates 7.8
Content	Character death, parental loss
Where to read	Tapas — official

Overview

Four-year-old Tia loves her father more than anything — a holy knight from another world who's the center of her whole life. When news comes that he's died, she doesn't grieve quietly. A mysterious creature tied to her father's past offers her a way to save him: travel back in time to his world. The catch is that they land before she was even born, which means the father waiting for her on the other side has no idea who she is, or that she exists at all.

It's an unusual hook — a found-family fantasy adventure built around a toddler protagonist trying to reach a parent who can't recognize her yet — and it's the kind of premise that lives or dies entirely on whether the child lead actually works as a character.

What it does well

Tia is the whole case for this story, and she earns it. She isn't written as a miniature adult wearing a child's face, and she isn't a cute prop for the adults around her to react to — she has a real child's logic and imagination, alongside a child's blunt, unfiltered way of processing something as heavy as losing a parent. That balance is genuinely hard to strike, and a lot of stories built around child leads either infantilize them into set dressing or accidentally write them as adults. This one keeps Tia recognizably four years old while still giving her real interiority.

The mercenary crew she falls in with on her journey deserves real credit too — they read as distinct people with their own presence rather than a support cast assembled purely to protect the cute kid. Watching them slowly become a found family around Tia is the emotional engine of the story, and it works because the story takes the time to let each of them matter individually.

The art carries a lot of that weight. It's genuinely striking — a wide cast with real visual variety, clean and expressive linework, and color work that sells both the adventure-fantasy stakes and the warmer, cuter childcare beats without either side undercutting the other.

Where it falls short

The pacing is patient by design, and with under 50 chapters released, the central reunion the entire premise is building toward hasn't happened yet. Readers who want the plot's central question answered soon should know this is a slow build, not a quick payoff.

Because the story is still relatively young, some members of the mercenary crew have more screen presence than actual backstory at this point, and a handful of chapters lean harder into cuteness than the story strictly needs, which can soften scenes that might have hit harder played straighter.

Verdict

Writing a genuinely convincing child protagonist without turning her into either an accessory or a tiny adult is a harder trick than it looks, and this story pulls it off, backed by striking art and a found-family cast worth caring about. It asks for patience while the actual reunion builds, but if a warm, emotionally honest fantasy about loss and found family appeals to you, it's worth starting now while it's still early.