My big complaint about the first volume was how easily everyone's trauma was swept away. It seems Sadanatsu agrees, because this volume reveals that Iori's problems have been festering this whole time and finally come bubbling up.
We also get a lot more POVs this time, to the point that this is the first book where the main POV isn't Taichi, and it really helps. Don't get me wrong, Taichi is more interesting than the average LN protag, but he's far less interesting than Inaba, what with her creative deployment of F-bombs. Seriously, why is Taichi the main guy when she's twenty times better?
The dialogue in this series always consistently makes me burst out laughing, particularly thanks to Inaba. There's so many great one-liners. Molly Lee does a fantastic job translating these books; despite them having the most swear words of any light novel series I've read. Though I don't mind in the least as it adds to the humor. There's lots of teenage drama and Heartseed shenanigans again in this volume but they all come out the stronger. I'm especially happy for Inaba and Taichi. Glad I got caught up in time for the new volume next week!
This volume finally focuses on the Iori story, after delving in her backstory in the past 3 volumes, but never really letting her issues get resolved. It also marks the biggest drama of the series so far, with Iori's emotional balance finally stretched to the breaking point, resulting in some major external conflict as well.
As a reader, at the end of this book I do think that Iori's issues were surprisingly underwhelming at its core, but thankfully the author does commit to it enough to make it believable enough although I don't think I could empathize with it.
Most of the characters' major conflicts are pretty resolved by the end of this volume, which does leave me wondering how will the series continue forward from this point onwards. Nevertheless, the biggest strengths of the Kokoro Connect series is the vivid characterization, so there's definitely more than enough angles that can be possibly covered.