The second guessing, self-recriminating, self-flagellating internal dialogue works(ish) for an about-to-hit-40 man whose marriage just blew up a year ago and is terrified his business isn't going to be enough to keep him and his adoptive daughters going, like Frank Shavell. It should not be how a 25-27 year old small business owner thinks about himself. IMO this is exposing how limited CNG's writing is of a male POV internal dialogue. I'm not gonna call this guy the protag, because like in Single Again it sure seems like he's not going to be driving any plot forward, as he's already got two women explicitly tell him "yeah, I'll fuck you and share you with whomever so long as I get my piece" and he's already, ludicrously telling himself internally "Never has a cis woman been so direct and explicit with what she wants from a male, but no, there's no way she actually meant that; she must've clearly meant the opposite that she wants a monogamous relationship, because girls mean the opposite of what they say, if TV and pop culture has taught me nothing else."
A woman MC has known for years tells him "I am going to give you so many children and we should start right now" couldn't have possibly actually meant that, she's just drunk and joking.
CNG IMO is good with setup and plot, not necessarily pacing, but whomever is writing the dialogue writes some pretty irritating monologues from the POV males (again, they're not protagonists, they aren't driving the story, they're just the POV.)
I liked the little links and inclusions of Single Again main and supporting cast in the backgrounds; the little glimpse of the DPG + mantoy in the very beginning, the confirmation that Darla and Nyla are indeed sisters and it's not just a bit for Fractured Fairy Tales. Of course now we have to reckon that the Single Again world isn't just fictional Canada, but it's also a magical fictional Canada and I demand a Wendigo girl that was cursed by ingesting too much sperm, dammit.
Unless CNG has had the money to staff up more, the addition of this is going to drastically cut down on Single Again updates in the ongoing future, most likely. CNG's estimations are notoriously optimistic for how fast they/their team work, and rotating this in, the annual update for Fractured Fairy Tales, and the voted side story VNs has me thinking that SA will probably be lucky to update 3x a year. I know this exists because CNG needed something for patreon and didn't want to lose the bulk of their revenue, but I think if Single updates get even fewer and far between they could begin losing paid backing across patreon and subscribestar, too.
This is cute, but it shouldn't be the focus, I'd plan this to be updated quarterly, and paid only when updates are released, and keep primary focus on Single Again and building up subscribestar paying backers.
But mostly, this just makes me think of how good Mythic Manor is and hope for an update soon. Esther is an S-tier faux Milf
