got both volumes of the boy I loved became the jaded emperor in a humble bundle, it was... weird. it's a reincarnation story, the main character is born with very unusual skin and that causes her ostracization, the love interest is a prince dumped in the woods for political reasons, they meet when she's a young adult and he is a single-digit child. she dies protecting him and gets reborn because of mumble mumble magic and love, and kept her memories and transcribed accent from her old life. they meet again, he has become cold and cruel, but overall he's very quick to warm back up to her and trust that she actually is his beloved caretaker reincarnated.
the plot is kinda. it's not unclear, it's easy to follow, but it's got some kind of residue on it, and everything seems to move a lot faster and more breezily than it should. (this type of pacing issue is really common in manga adaptations of light novels, though I cannot say whether it is also common in the light novels they're adapting cuz I'd strongly prefer the manga.)
the fact that the main character, before her reincarnation, is completely human is kind of interesting. she describes herself as a monster but she is completely unaffected by a magical attack that affects all the magical beasts. she's clearly disabled under the social model, she's visibly Different and consequently ostracized, and in fact one of her children is born with a much milder form of the condition she experienced in her previous life. they are able to identify the source of it, and even a potential cure for it, but because the child seems content with how he looks, they don't force it upon him. and the love interest is very clear that her appearance was no problem for him whatsoever, and describes the physical aspects her past self when asked what he's looking for in a spouse.
it is briefly mentioned in passing that the love interest's mother had some kind of illness that killed her when she gave him her magical protection, but there are not enough details for it to really matter one way or another from a representation perspective. it is mentioned that the main character's family staff are told that the main character is physically frail as justification for keeping him in comparatively neglectful circumstances but there is some skepticism, not that she is or isn't sick (she isn't), but that keeping her in the annex would be the right choice even if she was.
if you're a hardliner about age gaps this is a weird one, on account of the reincarnation.
I don't expect to ever read this one again, but at least it was different from the other things I've read.
