Boys Over Flowers 12 by Yoko Kamio: B+

From the back cover:
Tsukushi shocks everyone by making it all the way to the final competition in the Miss Teen Japan Contest. Her striking individuality and dumb luck have gotten her a long way indeed! Now the field is narrowed down to Tsukushi and Ayano, the competition favorite. The final event will determine the girl most likely to become a “good wife and wise mother.” Who is fit to judge such a contest? Why, twenty-one kindergarteners, of course! Unfortunately for Tsukushi, the innocent little darlings remind her of the F4…!

Review:
The contest wrapped up in this volume and I was pleased with how it turned out; to end otherwise would’ve required extra suspension of disbelief. Tsukushi’s final challenge (wrangling rich kids), and how she approached it innovatively and ended up befriending a rival in the process, reminded me a lot of Kyoko from Skip Beat!.

I was also happy that she spoke with Kinsan as promised. Their scene was good, as was the one she had later with Tsukasa when she revealed she’d hurt Kinsan. She also dared to ask Tsukasa why he does so much for her, but he didn’t answer seriously, and their outing (they were at the zoo on Christmas with a cute kid) ended in a suddenly-escalating fight that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Sigh.

I love it when Tsukasa’s serious and Tsukushi is forced to consider her feelings for him, so it frustrates me when that gets derailed. And now everyone’s on a jaunt to Canada with some bitchy rich girls, etc., so there’ll be some feuding and snobbery and stuff to get to before (finally) Tsukasa and Tsukushi are in a position where he can be sweet to her again. Oh well.

One-third of the way through now!