A lot of people search for Mother's Contract Marriage expecting a CEO romance, because the title reads like one. It's actually a manhwa: 엄마가 계약결혼 했다, written by Siya, drawn by Choo Hyeyeon, and adapted from Siya's own web novel on Kakao. The contract marriage belongs to the mother. The story belongs to her daughter.
NanoReads doesn't host it and never has. It's a licensed comic, and in English it's on Tapas. What follows comes from the Tapas and MangaUpdates listings. Nothing is invented, and there's no excerpt because we don't have the rights to one.
The premise
Lyrica is eight and lives in the slums with a mother who is, in the series' own summary, neglectful. Lyrica is the one who works. She's known as a reliable little worker and she knows exactly how bad her mother is with money. She gets through it with a very large imagination.
Then her mother has a premonition of a disastrous future, pulls herself together, and makes a plan to give her daughter a different life. The plan is to marry the emperor. She does it on a contract. Emperor Alterres adopts Lyrica, and a girl who was running errands in the slums becomes a princess.
What exactly are you looking at?
The series has two forms and several storefronts, and the listings don't all agree on the count. As of September 2026:
| Webtoon (comic) | Web novel (original) | |
|---|---|---|
| Creators | Siya (story), Choo Hyeyeon (art) | Siya |
| Korea | Kakao and Daum, from 2022 | KakaoPage |
| English | Tapas (since 2023). An Indonesian edition runs on LINE WEBTOON. | We couldn't find an official English release |
| Length | Tapas: 106 episodes, season 3 finished, on hiatus before season 4. MangaUpdates tracks the Korean run as ongoing, into season 4. | Not verified |
| How it's free | Tapas: episode 1 free, then one episode per day on a wait timer, except the newest 31 | n/a |
| Genre tags | Romance fantasy, comedy, drama, josei; child protagonist, nobility, contract marriage | Romance fantasy |
A contract marriage seen from the child's side
Most contract-marriage romances are narrated by the bride, and the question is always the same: will the fake thing become real? Putting an eight-year-old at the centre changes the question. For a kid who has been the grown-up in her house, whether her mother loves the emperor matters less than whether the new life holds, and whether the adults will keep her. The contract is the first stable home she's had, and it's still a contract. That's the tension the premise sets up; we haven't read far enough to say how the seasons resolve it.
That's why the series files under josei and comedy as well as romance, and why the romance shelf searchers get pointed to is a slightly odd fit. The adult version of this story, where a woman signs a marriage contract to protect a child, does exist. It's the first book on the shelf below.
Content, from the listings
- Child poverty and a neglectful parent in the opening
- A child protagonist; the romance, where there is one, is between adults
- No explicit-content flag on the listings we checked. The books on our shelf are adult romance and some are explicit or dark, so it's a warmer shelf than the comic.
Which one did you mean?
If you want the webtoon itself, read it on Tapas, the licensed English publisher. Episode 1 is free and the rest unlock one a day. Scan sites carry it too, but they aren't licensed and don't pay the creators.
If you want more manhwa like it, our marriage of convenience manhwa list collects the contract-wedding comics, and the K-drama list is there for anyone who'd rather watch.
If you want a contract-marriage novel tonight, that's what we host. Chapter one is free on every book below, and the marriage of convenience hub has the full set.
📜Contracts, crowns and kids
All contract serials →Only 3 of the 194 English novels in our catalog are tagged contract-marriage, and all three are here. We don't host a fantasy book with a child at the centre of a palace marriage, so the three fantasy and historical picks each cover one side of it: a magically binding fake marriage at court, a noblewoman taken from a royal wedding, and a girl who gets into the palace to save her sister.
Ava signs a one-year marriage to win custody of her little sister. Separate rooms, a no-feelings rule, social workers at the door. The adult cousin of Lyrica's story, and the only book we host where the contract exists to keep a child.
Read chapter 1 free →
Two rival mercenaries have to pose as a married couple at the Countess of Valois's court for ninety days, bound by magic rings that won't let them apart. Our closest fantasy contract marriage: a court, a deadline and a fake wedding nobody can walk away from. No children.
Start it free →
Lady Arabella is minutes from a forced marriage to a cruel prince when a masked mercenary takes her from the altar. He's the stable boy she loved ten years ago. Nobility and an arranged royal match, much darker than the comic.
Open chapter one →
Isolde slips into the Shadow Empire's palace under a stolen name to save her dying sister, and the prince is the one person who sees through her. A girl from nothing inside an imperial court, there for someone smaller than her. No marriage, but it's the palace side of Lyrica's story.
Try the first chapter →
Isla marries a stranger for a year to save her bakery. He's obviously hiding who he is. The softest book on this shelf.
Read chapter 1 free →
A typist becomes the fake wife of a car-company CEO to close a deal. Twenty chapters, so it's done in an evening.
Open the first chapter →Came for the palace more than the paperwork? Romantasy is the word for it, and From Substitute to Queen is our page on a wolf serial where a stand-in ends up on a throne. The books-like finder takes any title you loved and returns matches from our shelves.