くまクマ熊ベアー 2

This book is much much better than the first one. You get to see Yuna fit into the world and interact with all the characters a lot more, and the situations are a lot less repetitive. At times it even covered some slightly darker subject matters. In the last half some of the alternate PoV chapters get used in more interesting ways than just redoing the exact same events from another perspective.

I'm a bit surprised people found the first half boring, personally I enjoyed seeing the setups from the first book pay off, and didn't find the Fina PoV chapters all that annoying. Fina's writing style is simpler than Yuna's and you've already seen the majority of it so you can blast through them pretty quick. I think there was two of them in the first half.

I still feel like I want to see Yuna actually struggle with something, but maybe that's not the point of these books. Or maybe she will in volume three, who knows.

Language-wise the vocabulary and grammar felt a little more varied, mainly because there was just more stuff going on I think. It's a little more difficult than the first one but anyone who read the first one already should be fine.

i d give 3.5 stars if halfstars were a thing

I agree with the others - the first half really is a terrible drag, which is partly why it took me so long to finish it. The second half is indeed much better and we finally get to see the story continue and the ties deepen. I will definitely continue the series, but I hope the recap chapters wont be as plentyful as in this one.

Much better than book 1

This book felt much more interesting to read. And the plot much more natural. I liked all the extra characters and everything. Major plot stuff was like... kinda hand waved but this series isn't really trying to be a literary masterpiece. It's trying to be cozy and heartwarming and it succeeds. We get to see way more of Yuna's personality and other characters and it was very enjoyable.

Lots of repetition made it very good for language learning. I would say it was a bit harder than book one, but in a good way. Felt like more natural language.

Not as good as volume 1 but picks up

The first half of this volume drags a lot because of several chapters that retell the preceeding chapter from another character's perspective. Volume 1 did this a bit, but they were spaced out enough that it felt more like a recap, but in volume 2 most of the recaps come immediately after the chapter they're retelling, which made it a bit of a drag.

The book really picks up in the second half though, with Yuna using her talents to perform various acts of philanthropy and help out different characters in town. Since she's more established in this volume, we really get to enjoy the deepening friendships she has with other characters, and how the world starts to get used to her as she gets used to the world. Near the end there are some perspective-flip chapters that really do add value to the existing story and I particularly liked Cliff's chapter which was basically a self-contained short story that explains something Yuna had noticed earlier, but didn't get to confront herself.

The digital edition had a sizable amount of bonus material after the main chapters were over, including a three chapter short story that follows up on a bonus in Volume 1, and two different chapters from other characters that are also worthwhile because we learn more of their perspective and thoughts rather than having the same events repeated. Vocab-wise this builds nicely for learners who finished volume 1, as the familiar setting and terms are good reinforcement, but there are a lot of recurring words that are introduced with the new plotlines. I finally got a couple troublesome words and grammar points to finally stick seeing them repeated so much, and I do enjoy the author's style of prose.