Yurara Vol 2
When I read vol 1 of Yurara, I liked it, but was a bit disconcerted by how shojo-like it was. That may sound odd as, like Chika Shiomi's other books, it is shojo, her books tend to be shojo more because they're about girls who kick butt than for the usual shojo hearts and flowers and romance. Canon destroys the idea of the romantic vampire, portraying even the "heroic" and apparently eventual love interest as a near monster, and Night of the Beasts is like a romantic fable gone horrible dark and wrong in the best way possible. Yurara, about a teeny, clumsy girl who sees ghosts who meets two boys-cold and slightly sadistic but secretly nice Yato, and open goofbal with a darkside Mei- who are exorcists, respectively using water and fireas mediums, was just so tame and mainstream in comparison.
But I'm over that now, and while I don't love it quite as much as Night of the Beasts, I do love it. It's more of the normal shojo high school adventures and romantic triangle than the other two, but not so much so that it annoys me, and it works well. While either Aria or canon could squash Yurara(normal Yurara or Guardian Spirit Yurara) like a bug, I do like her, and I find Mei, with his outer goofball and inner dark angster very engaging. I'm still most interested, however, in the oh-so-serious and repressed Yato. Who, sadly, seems destined to be on the losing end ofthe romantic triangle, and hasn't got as much attention as Mei yet.
I admit, though, that I wish there wasn't so much emphasis on "spurred by love/desire ghosts." In this volume, there's the girl whose boyfriend dumped her while she was dying for another girl, the pervert ghost who hit on any female ghost he could find and tried to keep them, and, of course, the ghost of Mei's dead love, who was herself possessed by another ghost to try to kill him(yes it sounds a bit convoulted, but it makes perfect sense in the book.) Balancing it out, though, we have the ghost of Mei's mother, who won't move on because she knows her husband and three sons are the world's biggest skirtchasers, and is convinced that the moment she's gone, they'll be bringing girls home.
On an unrelated note, I'm a bit disgruntled with the new Novik book. In terms of quality, plot and execution, it's just as good as the first three books, but for some reason, it isn't grabbing me the way they did. I tore through each of the first three books in as close to one sitting as I possibly could, but with this book, I put it down after reading the first part to read Yurara. But I'm picking it back up now.