The Villainess Turns the Hourglass Volumes 2 and 3 Review

After time rewound, giving Aria Roscient a new chance at life, she is hell-bent on getting revenge against the people who caused her death.

Her younger stepsister, Mielle, is the main culprit, but due to her angelic behaviour, nobody sees her true manipulative self. So Aria decides that she’ll slowly turn everyone against her and destroy anything she tries to build. Her first order of business was to get between Mielle and her soon-to-be fiancé, Lord Oscar. Her plan seems to go all right until two obstacles show up: Oscar’s older sister and the true owner of the ducal house, Lady Isys, and a secret admirer who seems to be competing against Lord Oscar for Mielle’s attention. Aria is frustrated but she doesn’t give up. Although more players are now showing up in her game, they will also turn into pawns she can use to reach her goal.

The next step is to gain financial independence from House Roscient; Aria uses her knowledge of the future and the power of the hourglass to obtain the deals she wants. In her world, women’s words are considered frivolous, just gossip, and no one will take her seriously, not even her stepfather who ends up attributing some of Aria’s ideas as Mielle’s. After all, she’s his biological daughter and he wants her to shine. However, Aria doesn’t give up and works in the shadows to gain financial power by investing in small businesses owned by lower nobles. Even the business owners don’t know the real identity of their investor, but they don’t hesitate to assume the investor is a man.

Aria has her work cut out for her, but she’s just at the beginning. There is so much more to come, and now that she’s been able to turn one of Mielle’s maids into her loyal servant, and another one into her punch bag (metaphorically, of course), she’s slowly gaining more unwitting pawns in her revenge game.

When I first started this series, I thought Aria was going to be a villainess who, with knowledge of the future, could finally get whatever she wanted and deal with anything that came her way—someone who would not sway under any circumstances. However, that isn’t the case. She has plans and she knows how to navigate high society to show only what she wants to show, but when things don’t go her way, she still gets depressed and hides herself in her room. She doubts herself endless times, but never in front of others. When her plans derail, she gets upset and the introduction of Lady Irys and Lord Asher bring more problems than she expects.

Lady Irys is said to be the future crown princess, and the real power behind the ducal house where Lord Oscar comes from. In Volumes 2 and 3, readers can get a better sense of the type of man Oscar is, as he’s under his sister’s thumb. She’s the one who wants him to marry Mielle, and when she finds out that he’s not so sure about it anymore, she doesn’t hesitate to threaten him with Aria’s life. Moreover, Irys holds a lot of power in the nobles’ faction, which plans to control the crown prince. Her aim is to become the princess and get the reins of the empire.

Lord Asher, however, seems to somehow be on Aria’s side. Their first encounter was brief, and when Aria misled him by pretending to be her stepsister, she couldn’t have imagined what, or in this case who, she would bring into her life. While for the readers Asher’s true identity is clear, Aria doesn’t get to it until it’s been spelled out clearly for her by the man himself at the end of Volume 3. It seems kind of weird that she cannot get to it on her own, considering all the hints that she is given and that she’s supposed to be a genius villainess. This adds even more complexity to her personality, which I’m not sure if the authors did on purpose, or if they couldn’t make up their minds on how she should behave and act. She’s only 16 years old, but having lived twice, her mental age should be older, which doesn’t seem so, as at time she behaves like a child.

In these volumes the readers also get more information about the hourglass that allows Aria to turn back time and what possible side effects there are. And we also find out that Aria might not be the only one having a mysterious power, as someone else in her life seems to own a special power of his own.

The Villainess Turns the Hourglass is written by Sansobee and illustrated by Antstudio. It’s released as a web comic chapter by chapter on TappyToon, but the volume edition in the English language is released by Ize Press. Volume 4 is slated for release in August 2024.

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