百合の間に挟まれたわたしが、勢いで二股してしまった話

Yuri Tama Light Novel #1

by toshizou, としぞう, Kuro Shina (Illustrator)

史上最低!? だけどホントはピュアなガールズラブコメ!

この学校には『聖域』と呼ばれる二人の美少女がいる。
お姫様みたいに可憐な百瀬由那(ももせゆな)と、王子様と見紛うほどに凜々しい合羽凜花(あいばりんか)。
二人は家が隣の幼なじみ同士でとっても仲が良い。
なのに、そんな尊き百合の花園を踏み荒らす不届き者が現れた。
…………わたしだった。
しかも二人の間に挟まるだけでなく、両方に告白までされたわたしこと間四葉(はざまよつば")は、優柔不断が災いし二人と同時に付き合うことに。
いやなんで!?
お互いのことはもちろん秘密。
それでも二人を幸せにしたい。
こうなったら隠し通すしかない……二股はっ!
史上最低!? だけどほんとはピュアなガールズラブコメ!

Genres: Yuri, Light Novel, LGBT, Romance

348 pages, Paperback

First published November 25, 2021

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amongst the girls at Yotsuba’s school, none are more popular than the yuri ship of the princessly Yuna and the athletic Rinka. Dubbed the Sacrosanct, they play to the crowd that loves them. But Yotsuba’s their new friend and that facade might soon collapse in the face of whatever people see in Yotsuba.

Uh huh. Yep, this certainly says yuri on the cover and in the story. It feels like yuri from about a decade ago, however, and one written by a guy, at that. Not that men can’t write yuri, hello Adachi & Shimamura, but sometimes it’s kind of super obvious.

First off, I hate the term Sancrosanct and think it is dumb. Full stop. This might be down to translation, as a lot of light novels tend to have at least one term or repetition that is pure cringe. That firmly belongs in that camp.

Anyhoo, this is your basic ‘guy who isn’t popular lands the most popular girls’ except it tosses out the romantic triangle (the arrows are really free-flowing here) and changes the lead’s gender. Which is unfortunate, as Yotsuba tends to have the personality of a particularly damp sponge (this is the monkey’s paw version of gender equality).

The story starts off quite well, even despite all this - we get to see the girls in action and the section where Rinka is showboating for Yuna but the hint of something else brewing under the surface is very fun. The story knows how to yuri bait at the very least.

It also pays this off pretty quickly with two very forward encounters that really promise a lot more than this book’s actually planning to keep giving you. Still, if you were waiting endlessly for kissing with some other yuri, this one wastes no time getting right into the thick of it. At first.

Then it wastes absolutely all the time meandering over these pretty lame worries of Yotsuba being a dope who can’t choose between two lovers. So she doesn’t. It feels like an absolute waste of time, since Yotsuba is so boring to spend time with.

There are other bits of clever here - despite my noted hatred of sister complexes, having Yotsuba’s younger sisters be a little too competitive for her affections is genuinely funny to me for some reason.

The latter half of the story involves the fan club of the Sancrosanct and two characters who land with an absolute cratering thud, plus we get the snoozefest of all the effort Yotsuba puts in working through her dilemma. It’s just really dull. I’m not even sure how this is supposed to become interesting in the second volume.

Promising beginnings and rather a bit of a snore in the second half. It started off as a bit of a guilty read, but halfway through I was feeling like more of a sucker for continuing with it. Normally I read right through my lunch breaks constantly, but with this book I took numerous distractions as a welcome break from it.

2.5 stars - I’ll let the first half give it the win (barely) and also because I am feeling dumb enough that I might actually read a second volume. As it stands, however, if you read the first half of this book and then stopped, you’d honestly be better off in terms of quality.

[Henrique Raimundo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yotsuba Hazama is a terrible role model, a questionable friend, and an overall disaster of a human being.

I love her and wish her the best on all her future endeavors. I can't wait to be stuck in her chaotic mess of a brain for 300 odd pages again.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit racier than other yuri light novels I've read, this is exactly what it says on the tin.

[Janadzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nie tak dobre jak Watanare, ale i tak spoko

[kayla · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is the story of yotsuba and the bad bitches she pulled by being goofy

[Siddie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yotsuba is in high school in Japan. She is the most insecure underachiever, but from what I can tell, this is mostly because of nerves and overthinking, because under the goofy exterior is a friendly, intelligent and loyal person, who feels bad when she thinks she has made a mistake, and will sacrifice anything to help others.
Yuna and Rinka are her friends, a really special couple in the eyes of her high school peers, and each an overachiever- Yuna being a scholastic genius, and Rinka being an athletic star. Both cute, beautiful, and both very loving and accepting.
This is the story of how Yotsuba dates both of her friends at the same time, and how she accidentally makes it work.
I have gone quite deeply into this book. On the surface it is a fun, lively, quirky story, and the characters are all cute and entertaining. Underneath there is a hidden depth, emotional, thoughtful and caring.
This is written very much in a Japanese cutesy style, in first person, with Yotsuba giving us a running commentary of her feelings. The writing is good, and the translator really got all the idioms to work well from Japanese to English. Quite a large percentage of the story is Yotsuba’s inner monologue, where she loses herself in often debilitatingly depressive reminisces, causing Yuna and Rinka to wonder where she disappeared to mentally.
Even though on the surface this feels like a superficial manga style story, there are many deep relationship issues talked about. Also, even though Yotsuba seems to have - in her own words - a head full of rocks, she is remarkably good at seeing her friends emotional states, and doing something to help them.
It can be a bit frustrating, especially as I am used to reading more western style fiction, this particularly Asian style of writing can feel very slow, because so much of the text is concentrated on Yotsuba’s inner despair, embarrassment and insecurities, and so we also get to feel her tension and indecision. The reactions in this story are so unexpected, so different from what we have come to expect from our standard western tradition of writing. Western novels are built on set tropes, and written conventions that we instinctively know the meaning of. The translator has changed some of the Japanese writing conventions so westerners can understand them, but some of the actions, reactions and scenes seem very over-done. This is mostly the result of different cultural traditions, and something we have to adjust to. It’s also fun to see the differences, to experience a different way of writing.
This is so different from my usual reading that I found it difficult to give it a star rating, it is a long slog to the end, but it most certainly was worth reading all the way.

[Pieter · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Read at J-novel Club)

Yotsuba Hazama lucked her way into a prestigious high school where she accidentally ended up befriending Yuna Momose and Rinka Aiba, the Sacrosanct Couple of the school. Things took an odd turn though months later when both girls confessed their love to Yotsuba Hazama. She said yes to both, but should (or could) she really keep her love secret and how would her classmates react?

The light novel is a bit of a silly yuri high school romcom, quite entertaining at time with enjoyable characters different enough from the tropes to keep me hooked. Some of the tropes have their twists, especially in regard to the two timing and the personalities of the Sacrosanct Couple, which was certainly a pleasant surprise to me. Still, the behaviour of the characters is fairly over the top, both in admiration of the Sacrosanct Couple, their fan club and the MCs lack of abilities beyond cooking (and luck) and it is not particularly deep romance either.

Still, I found it an entertain read, more or less what I expected when I read the blurb. I am curious where things are going, some things developed a lot quicker than I expect, so who knows, they might not be dragging things out for volumes...

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

Right off the bat, this gets into the yuri action and promises some interesting relationship dynamics with the school power couple (with the worst couple nickname ever) and a regular every-girl but squanders the premise by failing to realise the main character is fatally uninteresting and boring to spend time with on her own. Yotsuba is only interesting when she has other characters to bounce off of - the second she is alone, she becomes an overly-neurotic dope and worse, boring.

Not only that, the back half of the novel introduces the Sacrosanct’s (yuck) fan club President and her meddling in the relationship. This drags the pace of the story right down and wastes time. There isn’t any point to this meddling other than to give us, unfortunately, more time with Yotsuba and her overthinking.

It’ll be interesting to see how the second volume salvages this plot.

[Johnny SkullTek · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was just a ton of fun to read! I seriously couldn’t put it down at times.

While plenty of the situations and circumstances in the story have a distinct ‘anime’ flavor to them, I found myself surprised over and over again at how much depth was added by the author fleshing things out, and adding small details here and there that made the world they live in feel ‘real.’

I feel like the author was threading a needle with having the MC doing some morally questionable stuff, but giving us enough insight into the (very relatable, IMO) thought processes that I honestly ended up feeling pretty impressed, rather than squicked-out with the MC’s character by the end.

I’m giving this one a 4.5 rounded up, and will definitely be checking out volume 2.