Manga: Kakegurui Twin 2

Kakegurui Twin Vol 2 
Rating: 4/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review! 

After losing her hard-earned profits to student council member Aoi Mibuomi, a penniless Mary is given a chance to take it all back on just one condition: she must team up with Aoi to oust the student council president! But in order to do so, she needs to first prove her skills in one of the academy's most popular annual events-the Coupling Party! Will Mary be able to use her gambling prowess to survive this dirty game of cupid? 

I've probably already said this but I want to reiterate...I love this spin off, it's such a strong spin off and is consistently strong each volume much like the main series! As we all know from the previous volume, Mary has no choice but to team up with Aoi if she wants to avoid becoming a house pet, and this volume reveals his plan to take down the Student Council President...of course we know certain things from the main series so I'm curious to see this play out. 

This volume sees Mary get roped in to a Coupling Party to prove her gambling skills and I have to say it's an interesting game and we haven't seen one quite like it just yet in the main series, so it made a nice and exciting change from the card and dice games as you wondered how Mary was going to come out on top and how this game could be cheated when it relied on people. Of course as always...there's never any guarantees with this series that our protagonists are going to win! 

I felt a lot of empathy for Mary who's struggling in this volume with being constantly deceived and is struggling to trust people, it's a realistic reaction for her circumstances and seeing her pull herself out of it was admirable. I'm always amazed that the creator for this series can take characters that you might not like...and have you sympathising with them. 

This volume makes for tense reading (which volume of this and the main series doesn't?!) as it was unclear who the mole was. Then there's the fact that if the person who is the mole, really is the mole...then how did they do it? And if they weren't the mole, who was? And again...how did they do it? Along with all of that tension we also get a shock twist and betrayal that I didn't quite see coming and I was left screaming after that chapter! 

This volume really had me going at one point, and it's as twisty and tense as ever! I may or may not have cheered in relief once I'd gotten past the tension, but then...Mary has only succeeded in attracting more attention to herself, which leaves me with a little bit of foreboding! Now that this little interlude is over, and Mary has proved what a badass, scheming genius she is I'm excited to move on to seeing her participate in the scheme against the Student Council President in the coming volumes!