Very! Very! Sweet 2

Ooh!  I liked volume two a lot more than volume one.  The strange relationship between Be-Ri and Tsuyoshi is fleshed out a lot more here.  I was expecting the two of them to have an antagonistic, oil-and-water-type relationship where they fought all the time and were attracted to one another anyway.  But that wasn’t how things went down at all.

Tsuyoshi actually eases up quite a bit on being a rich, spoiled jerk.  Despite the fact that he’s been sort of rotten to her the few times they met, Be-Ri decides to help him out anyway since she can’t bear seeing all the problems he’s having adjusting to life in a new country with a new language.  Things get better between them when Be-Ri insists on walking him to and from school and making sure he knows his way through the neighborhood.  She also realizes that she misunderstands Tsuyoshi’s bad Korean sometimes, and one of the more aggravating comments he made last volume is cleared up when Be-Ri realizes he just didn’t have the words to say what he wanted.  The two start getting along much better, though neither one of them seem that interested in romance at this point.

The romantic situations in this book are actually sort of atypical and pretty funny.  Tsuyoshi is the only one who realizes Be-Ri likes her sister’s boyfriend.  Be-Ri’s longtime friend Mi-Hyuk decides that he will start dating Be-Ri when he feels that Tsuyoshi is getting too close to her, but this is very much against Be-Ri’s will.  Tsuyoshi steps in to help her a couple times, and Be-Ri puts her foot in her mouth in front of the hottest guy in school, too.  Meanwhile, Be-Ri’s sister is actually sort of bored with her nice-guy boyfriend and starts wishing for more romance in her life, and Tsuyoshi winds up taking care of his Japanese girlfriend when she randomly shows up.

I was actually kind of disappointed when the Japanese girlfriend showed up (and is apparently going to stick around).  It’s such a common plot device, and she’s an extremely horrible person on top of that.  But Tsuyoshi has no problem telling her this, and a really nice scene comes of it when Tsuyoshi explains to his uncle why it is he doesn’t want her in his life anymore.

The weird sense of humor from the last volume is maintained through this one, too.  It’s a bit over-the-top, but it works with all the weird characters running around.  It got a laugh out of me during the scene where Be-Ri is confronted about who it is she likes and is basically asked out by three different boys at school.

I am curious how Tsuyoshi’s girlfriend will fit in with the rest of the cast, and I’m also waiting to see where Tsuyoshi’s heart will eventually land, and how the situation between Be-Ri’s sister and her boyfriend will work out.

This was a review copy provided by Yen Press.