By Haruka Momo and Maro. Released in Japan as “Marielle Clarac no Yakusoku” by Ichijinsha Bunko Iris NEO. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Jasmin Thairintr.

Usually when it becomes apparent the author is getting a little tired of writing their best-selling series, it’s not quite as blatant as this. Oh, don’t get me wrong, this is another fine book in the franchise for those who like the sort of things Marielle Clarac gives you. But the author states flat out that they had not expected to still be writing this as Marielle hits her 20th birthday (which she does at the end of the book), and they don’t really have a desire to write an adult Marielle. (This re-emphasizes my feeling that we won’t ever seen her as a monster, or if we do it will be in an epilogue in the last book.) And I get it. This series is meant to be about Marielle Clarac, but she’s been Marielle Flaubert for far longer. She’s no longer the teenage girl who can lurk in the background and hear juicy gossip, the juicy gossip is now about her. Not great.

Marielle is horrified to find that the gossip newspaper La Mome has a story accusing Agnes Vivier of plagiarism. After talking her down a bit, Simeon agrees with her that her publisher should handle things themselves… but of course, Marielle can’t help but investigate anyway. She meets up with the reporter that she teamed up with a couple of books ago, and discovers that the article was in fact meant to lure her out, as a piece of jewelry described in her latest book perfectly resembles a piece that a young nobleman needs to get his inheritance. Needless to say, that story is absolutely full of holes, and Marielle doesn’t buy it either. This does not stop her from getting involved, chased, kidnapped, kidnapped AGAIN, and seemingly nearly murdered a few times. Fortunately, she has her overprotective husband by her side. Most of the time.

One of the things I liked best about this book is it has a double bluff revelation. We get the somewhat obvious revelation I was expecting about 3/4 of the way through the book, which I did not complain about because it made a lot of the previous peril Marielle was in make a lot more sense. But then there’s another revelation near the end that was more of a surprise. And it’s always fun seeing Marielle sleuth, and fangirl over her husband looking dark and menacing. But I will admit, it *did* feel a bit like the writer is going through the motions, giving the readers what they want. There is a plot point dangled which promises to be of greater importance in the next book (which should be out faster than this one), but a lot of the most exciting things in this book are looking back at past triumphs rather than ahead to the future.

If the author does not really want to write Marielle as an adult, there’s not much further this can go. But it’s going another volume, at least. For fans.