At the end of the last book, the author promised to make things "even more dramatic" and "messier," and I worried it was just going to go down a path of invented drama for drama's sake. Somehow, that didn't happen. Even though there are some contrived situations, it all works as a vehicle for showing the one character's endless ambivalence and distress over the feelings she doesn't understand that are there for her friend. She still seems confused, believing that those feelings come entirely from her friend's aggressiveness; and it doesn't help that her friend is never straight with her, always dismissing the advances she herself makes as one big joke.
Of course that has been the theme of this relationship from the first page of Volume 1, but the deleterious effects of this "messiness" really are starting to take their toll on our main protagonist. It's also definitely sexier, wandering slowly from the upper-reaches of PG-13 towards R territory.
An additional plus is that our stock sleaze character is barely present this volume. We see him mostly only lying in wait, plotting something. He's mildly redeemed by almost being believable-bad but not-too-awful, even useful, in the few other scenes he appears. But to be sure the best part of this story (any yuri story, right?) is the relationship between the two girls. And while it's the usual "is it OK to feel this way about another girl?" conflict, it really is a bit—as the author promised at the end of volume 1—"extra soppy" than those other stories, in a delightful, almost-sleazy way that's a lot of fun.
The medium-length anime adaptation just started less than a week before this volume's release, and the end-note from the author is mostly how excited she is to see her characters come to life. Her promise this time is to "keep giving the manga my all so it doesn't lose to the anime." Seeing as the anime appeared to start even more hot and heavy and dramatic than Vol 1, I can only imagine the depths we'll descend in the next issue, if she keeps that promise.