[DeepL Translation - needs review] Aoi, a college girl, is brought to "Tenjinya", an inn for ghosts in Kakuriyo, to settle her grandfather's debt. In order to avoid being married off to the inn's grand master, a demon, she tries to use her cooking skills to pay off the debt, but ......?
(Translator: DeepL)
Fun!
This was a really fun read! I liked 葵, お涼、暁、鈴蘭, and the rest of the cast. I expected this to be more slice of life, but while it was overall relatively small in scope - mostly encompassing the people at the inn - there were multiple fight scenes and an excellent amount of drama! But also lots of cooking, which meant lots of lookups for me, haha. (Recommendation: Don't read when hungry.)
I look forward to seeing 葵 and 大旦那様's relationship grow (I need to know what his favorite food is!) and reading about her opening her restaurant, as well as what お涼 will do next. I'm sure drama will ensue, as will character growth and world building.
Japanese-wise, this was a bit of a challenge at first, as I got used to the writing style and the story. It was my fourth novel in Japanese, and I had reread part of a series I'd read the English translation of for my first three books. Here, I wasn't familiar with the story or the characters, so there was more to pay attention to. I also switched to using a J-J dictionary, which was a bit of an adjustment, since it tanked my reading speed.
However, I was back to around 20 pages an hour by the end of the book, so I'm quite happy with that. I learned some new grammar and plenty of new vocabulary as well, so lots of gains there.
Overall, I'm happy to have read this and found a fun new series to continue reading and improving my Japanese with! Definitely recommended.