This volume was mostly a bit of fun with undercurrents of character development, though I found some of the awkward handling of Hiyori's emotional distress at times tiresome, especially combined with some of the over-the-top silliness going on around her. The threads of character development were interesting in the abstract, though, and the short story arc involving the old woman at the end was easily up to the standards of the rest of the series. Unfortunately, most of the book fell a bit short of that. I felt this volume warranted a three star "liked it" rating overall, with the story arc involving the old woman easily reaching into the range of a four star "really liked it" rating.

. . . then the blatant references to a secret in the last few pages felt a touch ham-handed.

This probably seems like a negative review, but it's really only negative because of the contrast with the generally very high storytelling quality of the series as a whole. It was still a good read. ( )