Holy cow, what a trainwreck this manga is.
The art is abysmal... It just feels rushed and inconsistent. The mangaka doesn't know how to use his skills to emphasise a scene : the scenes that are supposed to be impactful lack details while useless random scenes are more elaborate. Sumireko's design is a symbol of this issue in itself : her "busty onee-san" appearance is much more plain than her "librarian girl" style, which ironically makes her somewhat less attractive when she's supposed to be at her peak.
Meanwhile, the story quickly took a huge nosedive. The premise was quite interesting: manipulative people using a facade to hide their selfish interests, and trying to outwit each others in a twisted romantic competition. But the whole "battle of wits" only lasted for a short arc and the story is now going downhill... Soon enough, it's going to be another bland romcom with no redeeming features and cliched tropes everywhere.
To add insult to injury, the narration is as bad as the story, since the mangaka doesn't seem to know what he's doing, and the translation is terrible, making the whole thing even more confusing. Lack of polish from top to bottom.
But some people just love digging even though they already reached the bottom of the darkest depths. To crown all of that, the characters are even worse.
The MC is just pitiful. He's a good guy who loves to think of himself as a manipulative mastermind (at least, in the beginning) while he's only a doormat for everyone to step on. He has such a low self-esteem that he's trying to get attention and validation from everyone, while simultaneously rejecting the only girl who likes him for who he actually is (probably because he rejects this whole aspect of himself), even though it's hinted that he actually loves her (but can't accept it because it would mean accepting being the lowest of the lows). Get some fucking help, dude.
The librarian girl is just confusing. Behind her twisted antics, she's a Mary Sue in disguise: she knows everyone and all their deepest secrets, understand everything, is in fact a super hottie behind the bland facade, and can read mind or know about events she never witnessed directly. And we're supposed to believe that she fell in love with our lame MC because she knows that behind his "nice guy" facade of his, he's actually a complete doormat having delusion of grandeur? She's an amalgam of wish-fulfilment materials without anything to tie her together in a rounded character.
The best friend is a douchebag holding a petty grudge over some random no-name girl while he's supposed to be the hunk of the school and have all the girls running after him. The kind of guy who wouldn't hesitate to take a girl by force and rape her (thinking that it would make her his) and betray a long-time friend who always was here to support and comfort him. Just kill him already.
And the two other girls are just as bad. They are walking archetype trying to be a subversion of themselves but failing hard. The "childhood friend" friendzoned the MC long ago and used him to get in the pants of his hot bro and is now becoming all meek after it all blown up to her own face. The council president is a stupid bimbo who actually would be a perfect fit for the douchey "best friend" since she's also the type to ditch people when she can't use them anymore (she expelled the MC from the council even though he was doing all the work for her) and is now coming back crying because she feels lonely after all those broken characters made up with each others.
At this point, I don't know why I'm reading this anymore nor why I'm wasting time typing a commentary that required more work than the whole story so far. To fix this shit, the mangaka need to go back to art school and hire assistants, the MC needs to grow a spine and start being a man, the librarian need a solid backstory to ground her and explain her quirks, the best friend needs to break his leg and have all of dreams crumble in order to learn some humility and the two stupid bitches need to go back to being a subversion of their trope like they were supposed to be. And all of that has less than 1% chance of happening.
Are there any people reading the light novel who could tell us if it's worth expecting anything remotely interesting to come out of this manga? Should I drop this already before I get cancer?