Is The Villainess Makes Amends Worth Reading? Review & Where to Read

Quick facts
Format	Manhwa (shoujo), 57 chapters
Run	2024–present · ongoing
Community score	AniList 7.2 · MangaUpdates 7.4
Content	Death of family members, execution, violence, war (mentioned)
Where to read	Tapas — official

Overview

The Villainess Makes Amends is an ongoing Korean manhwa written by Yoo Na Jin with art by Eddie, adapted from a novel and published in English on Tapas. Kiana Ellie Frellai left her family behind to build a quiet academic life as a professor of magical engineering, glad to finally escape her reputation as the household's troublemaking black sheep. That peace ends when her family is wrongly accused of treason and sentenced to execution. Her cousin Melissa manages to turn back time by a year to stop it — but only Kiana keeps the memories of what's coming, leaving her, and her blunt magical-beast companion Chirpy, to somehow repair a family she'd already half-abandoned before the year runs out again.

It's a familiar shape for the villainess/regression genre, and the manhwa knows it — what it's betting on is a lead worth following through the familiar beats.

What it does well

That bet mostly pays off. Kiana is written with real personality: matter-of-fact, self-aware about her own reputation, and funny in a way that keeps the story from tipping into the genre's more melodramatic tendencies. The family she's trying to save is just as specific — an unhinged swordsman, a gossip-magazine aunt, an oddball grandfather — giving her mission actual emotional texture instead of an abstract "save everyone" goal. Reader reaction backs this up directly, with more than one review calling the book out specifically for being funny, which isn't always a given in a genre this stacked with execution plots and political conspiracies.

The art is a clear asset too — full color, clean, and confident enough to move between comedy beats and genuinely heavy material (a terminally ill emperor, a wrongful execution, court intrigue) without the tonal whiplash that can undercut series trying to do both.

Where it falls short

The honest limitation here is that this is well-worn ground. Time rewind, one person carrying the memories, a family to save from an unjust fate — this is the villainess genre's most common shape, and while this manhwa executes it well, it isn't trying to subvert it. At only 57 chapters in, the larger political plot — a missing prince, a succession dispute, a crown prince apparently working an angle of his own — is still in setup mode, so it's too early to say whether the payoff will match the setup's ambition. And if you're picking this up mainly for a central romance, that thread is currently secondary to the family and political plotting, which may not be what some genre readers are specifically looking for.

Verdict

This is a well-executed, genuinely funny entry in a crowded genre, carried by a lead with more personality than the average villainess-story heroine. It's not reinventing the format, but if you enjoy watching a sharp, self-aware protagonist claw her way through a wrongful-execution plot with her prickly extended family in tow, it delivers exactly what it promises.