sono yubiwa wa kokuhaku suru

I finally read Sono yubiwa wa kokuhaku suru, the fourth and penultimate book in the Sono yubi dake ga shitteiru (Only the Ring Finger Knows) series, and I gotta say...I'm glad there's only one book left. The series always balanced sappy shoujo-ness with charming sweetness, but this last book teetered over into sappy shoujo territory for me. The biggest problem was that Wataru had turned into a shoujo heroine in the worst way, losing a lot of his spunk. Kazuki felt absent, though even when he was around he was opaque. His teasing/loving switches were fewer and seemed half-hearted. In this volume I felt like the two were being defined solely in terms of their romantic relationships, with each other and with others. Maybe my impression was wrong, but I felt that the previous books did a decent job of rounding out the characters beyond their romantic roles...

In any case, overall I wasn't too happy with this volume. I'm hoping that the last book wraps things up well and not fall off the deep end of mega-shoujo sappiness.

( more spoilerish comments )

The cover illustration is SO PRETTY, but is it just my imagination or are there less pictures in this volume?