This was a really fun read! I liked Aoi and the rest of the cast. I expected this to be more slice of life, but while it was overall relatively small in scope - mostly encompassing the people at the inn - there were multiple fight scenes and an excellent amount of drama! But also lots of cooking, which meant lots of lookups for me, haha. (Recommendation: Don't read when hungry.)
I look forward to seeing
Japanese-wise, this was a bit of a challenge at first, as I got used to the writing style and the story. It was my fourth novel in Japanese, and I had reread part of a series I'd read the English translation of for the my three books. Here, I wasn't familiar with the story or the characters, so there was more to pay attention to. I also switched to using a J-J dictionary, which was a bit of an adjustment, since it tanked my reading speed.
However, I was back to around 20 pages an hour by the end of the book, so I'm quite happy with that. I learned some new grammar and plenty of new vocabulary as well, so lots of gains there.
Overall, I'm happy to have read this and found a fun new series to continue reading and improving my Japanese with! Definitely recommended.