A Young Lady Finds Her True Calling Living with the Enemy Volume 2 by Syuu, Illustrations by Fujigasaki. Published by Cross Infinite World.
Because this is the second half of the story, this impression will contain spoilers. If you want my general impressions, please read my post about Volume 1!
The second and final volume of this series follows the story-line from volume 1. Japan does this a lot, but these volumes are better thought of as the first and second half of the same story. Now that Bertine is secure in her position, she continues to do business, make profits, and plot the downfall of her home country’s current monarchy, with the help of Cecilio and her friends from the Empire.
This book also includes Bertine successfully achieving her dream of building a hotel, and setting up the infrastructure for people to travel and experience the Federation for themselves. I really enjoyed these kind of “country-building” projects, and I’m glad that the series takes this into account.
I won’t go into specifics as to how the book ends, but I was looking forward to seeing how the romance between Bertine and Cecilio develops from the first book. It was obvious that Cecilio was in love with her, but I wanted to see more adorable interactions. While the rest of the book was quite engaging, I have to say that it was a little disappointing from that angle. For plot reasons, their relationship isn’t addressed until the end, so readers don’t get much time to read about their actual relationship.
Neither of the main couple are particularly romantic, so I do have to admit that it’s pretty realistic how they get together. At the very least, there is a quite funny side story of their romantic picnic devolving into chaos when an unexpected visitor shows up (LOL).
Overall, I really enjoyed this series, and it was refreshing to see a female-centered series that doesn’t overly focus on the romantic drama.
I’m definitely interested in more of Syuu’s books, and luckily, two of their book series were just recently licensed, Victoria of Many Faces by Yen Press, and Soup Forest by Cross Infinite World.