The Perks of Being an S-Class Heroine Volume 1 Review

One day a young woman, from what seems to be the modern world, is killed while crossing the road. When she wakes up, she finds herself in a weird location—it’s not really the underworld, but a temporary place where souls are assigned a new world to be reincarnated into. It’s pretty exciting as she’ll be reborn into the story of a book! It’s the dream of many bookworms, but unfortunately the story assigned to her belongs to a fantasy novel she read when she was in middle school, which has an S-Class difficulty level of survival. She’s almost ready to despair until she realizes she subscribed to the highest-tier insurance package that appeared on her phone right before her heart stopped beating. Together with the heroine, the readers will find out what this insurance package entails.

Reborn as Ailette Rodeline, the youngest daughter of an alchemist who works for a noble, her new life shouldn’t be too bad…if only her father hadn’t signed a contract that doesn’t benefit him or his two children at all. Now, forced to work for the noble family and subject to the bullying of the young master and the head maid, Ailette will prove what she can do and will survive at any cost. First order of business is to get rid of the head maid and her daughter. Then she can find a way to live a long, long life.

In fact, the novel she’s reincarnated into is set in a doomed fantasy world. The hero of the story goes back in time over and over again to stop the destruction, but Ailette wakes up during the 17th time loop of the protagonist, one of the worst in the book. Thankfully her new life allows her a tutorial period, which takes place a few years before the main story begins, and through the insurance package she acquired as a transmigrator, she can buy the skills she needs in this new life.

And what’s the best way to survive in this world doomed to fail? Being a healer, of course! While she starts practicing her newly acquired skills, she’s able to converse with the gods responsible for the world-building, and she finds out that her time on Earth was accidentally cut short. The gods made a mistake! Ailette cannot go back, but she’ll exploit all the guilt the gods are feeling for it to get as much compensation as possible. She’ll make sure to squeeze them dry…

The Perks of Being an S-Class Heroine is based on a standard isekai trope. The main character is an orphan, mistreated by her relatives who used her parents’ life insurance money for their own gains, leaving nothing to her. She was trying to make it on her own before she died. In this new life, she still has to deal with mistreatment from various people in the noble’s estate, but this time her father and older brother love her immensely and don’t hesitate to show her.

Ailette still has the memories of her previous life, and although her new body is that of a small child, her brain is much more developed. So it doesn’t take long for her to start getting rid of her bullies and gain the favour of many high-ranking servants in the estate. When she catches the attention of Lady Bianca, the young miss of the noble family, Ailette’s life seems to take an unexpected turn, hopefully for the better, only for the two girls to get trapped in a dungeon with monsters.

Ailette’s story, although it starts out sad, also includes a comical aspect that continues throughout the story. The way she deals with people and the situations she finds herself in always allows her to gain the upper hand, and her conversations with the gods show that they too can make mistakes and they have to pay for it as well. Moreover, the cheat skills she’s gained through the life insurance package help her out a lot and let her stand out from the rest of the servants. We don’t know yet why she got the offer for the life insurance package right before she died or why she was reincarnated into this world, but it seems probable that Ailette will take the place of the original hero of the novel and will become the heroine who will save the world and possibly the hero himself.

The illustrations use a bright and light colour palette as one would expect from a shojo story. It changes to darker shades when Ailette has to deal with the monsters in the dungeon or when she recalls her memories from her abusive relatives. The illustrator Grrr also pays special attention to what the characters are going through as their expressions can convey the story without words—readers can just look at Ailette’s face to know she’s scheming something.

The main narrator in the manhwa is Ailette, although at times the story is told by an external and omniscient narrator, especially when we get the point of view of other characters in the story. The author Irinbi also included an Easter egg of another one of her works in this volume, Revolutionary Princess Eve, which at the moment can be read as a digital webcomic on Tapas.

Overall the story is a light and fun read, and although Ailette encounters her first dungeon in this volume, we can anticipate that she’ll deal with it in a hilarious way, as she’s been doing so far for everything thrown in her direction.

The Perks of Being an S-Class Heroine is written by Irinbi and illustrated by Grrr. It started as a digital webcomic on Tapas as well, and it’s released in print format in the English language by Ize Press. Volume 2 is slated for release in August 2024.

Our review copy from Ize Press was supplied by Diamond Book Distributors UK.