I think I will have to stop reading, because here I am already seeing part of what made me drop Abandoned Empress too, and it feels like it is a trend with this author in particular.
We have been told that the brothers did things far worse than a slap to the face to her, we first met them when the youngest had tricked her into almost dying from frostbite, and yet...
What, because the parents who are so loving to her are clearly being neglectful and/ot straight up abusive towards the brothers, she has to just feel bad and forgive them? What, are they going to play nice a few times and thay means everything is forgotten?
Am I to expect than in the next 8 meetings she will suddenly love her adoptive brothers and be loved in turn thanks to some magical fix in their shitty take of going to hurt the unrelated kid for their own parental issues?
Miss me with that shit. Miss. Me. With. That. Shit.
I saw the signs in AE, I mercifully got warned in time, and this is my warning to you all: this authir seems to get off on portraying pretty damn toxic relationships, slap some tragic backstory onto the abuser, and then have the FL forgive them with little to no effort on the abuser's part.
If the author at least bothered to be honest about the shitty ass relationships, I could deal with this just fine. But this? Pretending to be self aware of the tropes, doing basically nothing and then wanting people to act like you subverted them?
Thanks no thanks, bye and see you never