A Devil and Her Love Song, Vol. 13

4.5* stars Six months after Shin's departure, Maria and company are making plans for their future as they venture into their senior year. Everyone has ideas or knows where they want to go in their life, but Maria is unsure where to go with her future. An unexpected visitor sets Maria on a path that everyone else saw coming, but devils need to find their own way to their dreams. While I'm sad the series has come to an end, I believe this is a good ending for the characters, albeit everything was tied up a bit suddenly and cleanly to me. There was a 6 month time jump in the beginning, which is probably why things seemed sudden, however things with Maria's biological father and her grandparents, (mother side,) all seemed too perfect. Within the past 2 volumes everything fell into place just like that, the grandparents forgiving the man who assaulted their daughter (Anna, Maria's mom) when she was 14, was forgiven just because he couldn't sing Amazing Grace, cares deeply for Maria, and fell in love with their daughter while corresponding with her by letters. Shintaro being the foster son to said man, (who has turned his life around,) was one thing, but the sudden and utter forgiveness of the grandparents felt too unrealistic. Although it was kind of nice to see people forgive one another at face value, it was still a bit much. I like that in this volume a couple of the chapters were in other characters point of view, especially the final chapter being in Yusuke's point of view, I feel like he was the best person to describe the ending and what it meant to Maria and the others. And while I did like all the characters, I do wish that more chapters centered around Ayu and Tomoyo instead of centering around the boys so much of the time. Even with everything, I still very much like this series, I especially love Maria even though she had a rough patch through volumes 9 to 11, she did come back to being her blunt self, but with more softness, self love, and love of those around her. The beginning volumes were funny and light hearted with some serious moments in between, the late-middle volumes (10-11) got into heavier moments and topics, but by the end it came back to being a light and sweet series that I would recommend reading as long as you're ok with some serious topics mixed with a lot of self-growth and love.