Spoilers should always be hidden using spoiler blur.
When discussing a specific section, please mention where you are in the book, ideally by chapter so people reading different versions have a clear point of reference.
Feel free to read ahead if it’s exciting, but please refrain from spoiling ahead of the appropriate week.
If you have a question about grammar, vocab, cultural things, etc - ask! That’s a welcome part of the discussion too, and other readers will be happy to help.
Well I told @Biblio plot starts in this chapter, but it’s really minor it’s more like we are showing the current state of the characters at the end of this first part.
Anyway, this part is short and sweet (except for a certain someone doing sh*t without consent; I like him a lot less this time around… although maybe it’s just that I didn’t like him then, but forgot).
Wow, I can’t believe we’re just starting out with a “wow, those last seven years sure were fast!!”. That’s one way to time skip, I suppose.
Edit:
Week 9 thoughts, up to the first paragraph break after the illustion
I actually did like the overview we had of the friends/love interests in the first part of this chapter, and I’m looking forward to Katarina interacting with them at her party. Some idle thoughts on the boy/girlfriends so far:
I have the feeling that キース might be trying to work the 女たらし charms on her, but of course it’s not working at all on Katarina. Interesting that she does notice ニコル’s in full force, though she still seems concerned about him entrapping キース. You know, come to think, I could totally see ソフィア shipping her brother and キース.
Speaking of ソフィア, she surprisingly doesn’t seem to be in love with Katarina? Or her feelings are hidden so deep they’re unnoticeable even by the reader so far.
メアリ has the award so far for “most likely to succeed” in terms of pure forward aggression with her pursuit of Katarina, which I love for her. “How about we both break off our engagements and flee to another country to live together??!!” “Wow, メアリ’s so nice, to think of me like that. ” メアリ, you’re closer to your goal than you realize, at least considering Katarina’s current headspace of “must avoid bad ends”.
アラン and ジオルド I’m gonna need to see a little more effort from. We had the nice dance scene with ジオルド at least, and I get the sense from him that he’s fully aware of Katarina’s ditziness and is content to leave things as they are for now, which is also fine. That was a nice illustration we got, too; I’m glad everyone’s now no longer a child, haha. What exactly did he do to her neck that she described as ちくっと? Pinched her?
Rest of week 9
アラン my boy, what are you doing? You lost your game over a little mention of 下着! Katarina doesn’t even have any wildly mistaken beliefs about you now!! Like with ニコル、who was lucky enough to semi-confess. About his forbidden romance. With maybe a married woman or a man.
さすがメアリ様、my hero. Of course she practiced the man’s part of the dance, “just in case”. And ソフィア wanted to dance with Katarina too! I knew it was in you somewhere.
To go so far as to even pack a hoe in her school things… I’m extremely impressed by Katarina’s determination to not let her skills lapse. And we’re so close to schooooool now! I want to see what happens! Will she meet the protagonist? Will the protagonist be her roommate?! Let’s have lots of awkward school rumors fly around about Katarina and her posse!
Katarina just dancing away with everyone, completely oblivious that they all are trying to woo her was probably my favorite scene from the book. She’s so deep in her thoughts that she has no idea what’s going on around her and I absolutely love it. I had kinda assumed that our second half of the chapter was going to be the protagonist, but I guess not since we haven’t made it to school yet…are we going to have to wait into book two to meet her??
Hickey is what I call it … But I’m trying to think if there’s an actual word for it or that’s just what everyone calls it.. that sounds really slangy to me for some reason. I much prefer キスマーク, tbh, so much cuter sounding
Oh there it is. Puberty hit everyone but Katarina.
She tells me that we should dissolve our engagements and escape together to faraway lands. What a wonderful and kind friend she is.
…Katarina…
She tells me to marry her brother, what a sweet bro-con she is
…Katarina…
Each character’s update started with そして and my brain perceived it as “and then, finally” each time. But it’s not “finally” if there are four more of these.
Tbh, if I was reading this without the weekly breaks I’d be so outraged at the constant god-damned repetitions. We hear the bg of each character from Katarina, then in POV and then again in this chapter? Come onnnn.
Ok, so Geordo, was that a hickey? A bite? (I’d assume kissmark?)
And poor Nicole.
Mary’s yuri arc is staying strong for now.
Andddd the Academy is coming up. Soon. Possibly we’ll meet the game’s MC in the last chapter?
The plot didn’t fit into the volume, it’s 89% prologue
My name is Ann, I am a daughter of so and so, serving Katarina-sama. She’s been an egoistical spoiled young lady until she hit her head and changed (but became arguably even less manageable - started climbing trees, etc).
Let me tell you all over again about all the characters now for ten pages after we have spent the previous 30 pages doing the same thing.
Now that we’re done, I am a daughter of so and so, serving Katarina-sama since she was a willful egoistical young lady until she hit her head and became even less manageable - started climbing trees and…
Are you kidding me right now??
I’m sorry, this is ridiculous.
Somehow the entire staff involved in the publishing couldn’t combine the pre-yet-another-recap and post-yet-another-recap into a one coherent story, really?
At 96% where Ann reflects on how she knows why everyone is so attracted to Katarina, this would’ve been a perfect place to list everyone in 3 sentences to get a proper format of:
I’m Ann, this is my horrible background
This is how Katarina saved me
I really appreciate her and I really understand all these people who are crazy about her even if she’s blind to it
I’ll stay with her even if she goes to the palace to marry Geordo or move in faraway lands with Mary
The end
Done. We’d lose 15-20 pages or useless repetition within the same goddamn chapter - it’s not even hard to edit this kind of messy draft-like text.
It’s such a shame, considering that Ann’s story was sweet and the bonus story was funny, but wow, this chapter (last week + this week combined) lands it overall at “2/5 please fire the editor” kind of book.
TLDR: It’s a pity that I’m mentally committed to finishing the story arc by reading the next vol too.
I’ll feel less miserable if I can write per-chapter reviews so yes please.
Yes, pretty much but I feel it has improved as we get a bit more background for the character of the POV than in vol 1, I think. That might just also be, because everyone is now at least in their teens and simply has more going on.
Finished week 10~ And immediately bought volume 2! Mary’s interlude was just okay (this is like the third recap we’ve had at this point of the book, lol), but I really enjoyed the side story; just friends hanging out, nothing to see here. We got a great group picture as well!
Thanks for hosting the club, @Naphthalene! I had a great time!
Yeah, the amount of repetition in this volume (and series in general, although it quickly gets better) was the one major complaint I had.
However, thanks (?) to it, I had a pretty good recollection (for better of for worse) of what happened in this volume. I only remember 2-3 major plot points from volume 2, volume 3 comes out as blank, and I remember the end of volume 4. I remember the one relevant story in volume 5, and then volumes 6+ are kind of a blur (I remember some major events, but that’s about it).
So I guess the amount of repetition is somewhat taking a step back
Okay, I can do that. Do you want me to just dump everything at once, or would you like a weekly schedule? (Or something else?)
I think one thread for vol2 is enough, but the schedule is… a good question. I was hoping I could do Karatina’s POVs on one week and the rest on another, so ± a chapter in two weeks same as here.
@shitsurei what do you think? Should we have a schedule or dump-as-we-go fully informal thread is fine?
Thank you for the tag! I will probably be reading on an informal schedule for volume 2; if others would like a schedule a follow, I’m 100% okay with it, but I can’t guarantee I’ll follow it.
it’s more like 
“How about we both break off our engagements and flee to another country to live together??!!” “Wow, メアリ’s so nice, to think of me like that. 
” メアリ, you’re closer to your goal than you realize, at least considering Katarina’s current headspace of “must avoid bad ends”.
and am already 31% into the next volume… 
And immediately bought volume 2! 
