I could not think of a better series to do my first review on other than Pet Girl of Sakurasou

Pet Girl of Sakurasou for a while, was my favorite series of all time
That is not the case after reading the LN
This is my first review and I am not really adept with writing so it might be all over the place. Hopefully if it is, you can bear with it and still find the review helpful

[THERE WILL BE SPOILERS]

Why I love the anime

There are a multitude of reasons why I love Pet Girl of Sakurasou anime, funnily enough, the romance isn’t as high as many would think it would be considering it is a rom-com.
For me the things that cemented the anime as a favorite were the interactions and relationships between each Sakurasou member. Sorata was some kind of helper/parent for a while to Mashiro as she was not acclimated to society after being isolated. Misaki was the person who relieved Sorata of his stress solely just by being her out and wild self. Chihiro-sensei and Jin were kind of like mentors to Sorata, dropping hints here and there to help him progress his relationship with Mashiro or Nanami, and many other relationships/interactions between other characters
Another reason was also Sorata being the odd one out in Sakurasou. Everyone there at the start had a talent in some type of field, whether it was Art, Writing, Programming, etc. while Sorata was still trying to figure out what he wanted to do and whether he was good enough for it. Personally, I resonated with it and maybe that was what had got me connected to the anime in the first place.
Seeing Sorata struggle but also still try his hardest to make everything around him also work was another plus aspect for him as a character in the anime for me.

Onto the content that happened after the anime, volumes 7-10

First thing I wanted to point out was that the 2nd half of the series was definitely at a faster pace. Volumes 1-6 covered Sorata’s 2nd year of high school while 3-4 volumes did year 3. I don’t know if Kamoshida was rushed to finish the series, but later on, I’ll explain why I find this to be a reason to why the quality of the second half and ending was poor
Going to go through each volume and pinpoint my problems with them.
In volume 7, I found Kanda really inconsistent with the event that happened in the anime, specifically episode 22 of the anime where Nanami essentially sees Kanda’s feelings w Mashiro and pretty much tries one last time to win him over, obviously not working. But in volume 7, you find out Sorata actually has feelings for both heroines, more feelings for Nanami at that.
That inconsistency continues into volume 8 where he realizes he likes Nanami, and when even asked what he likes about both heroines, he goes on to list a multitude of reasons more on why he likes Nanami, but in the end he ends up choosing Mashiro. It is never really made clear why he made said decision. Obviously Mashiro is the main heroine and everyone expects him to end up with her, but I find it a bit unnatural when he gives more reasons to be with Aoyama. Onto volume 9, the problems rack up even more. Kamoshida makes a new Sakurasou member, Kanna Hase, develop feelings towards Sorata, essentially making Pet Girl a harem in this case, which makes no sense for that to happen when he is currently in a relationship with Mashiro. It also doesn’t not make sense for Kanna’s character as it seems the author is trying to develop a relationship between Iori and Kanna, which does become a thing in the far future. Another major problem, Nanami, a major character for the whole series so far, moves out of Sakurasou after getting rejected by Kanda and being forced to move back into the dorms, she is essentially forgotten and thrown onto the back burner, only showing up in few scenes for the rest of the series. Pretty much a slap in the face for readers and we pretty much get left with a hole as we never get to see Nanami’s development towards becoming a successful voice actor. Another point is that it was pretty evident that Kanda’s development became pretty stagnant. In the first half we saw him try and fail multiple times when it came to endeavors pertaining to his game designing goals. But in the second half, he faced problems when it came to balancing his dreams and Mashiro, but 0 development came from that and it made me feel as if Kanda has not improved at all since volume 6. He essentially just becomes more perverted and that’s it. Last problem I found in volume 9 was Sorata and Mashiro's relationship not having any development. Calling back to a conversation Misaki and Kanda had in volume 8, Misaki told Kanda about coming to love someone and right away, you aren’t in love but being in a relationship allows you to go and find what you love about your partner. Despite this conversation, we don’t see anything between Sorata and Mashiro besides their sexual life going further. They constantly are separated from each other because of work, it essentially feels as if they are not in a relationship. Volume 10 is just the icing on the cake of this shit show so far. Sorata and Mashiro get in multiple arguments, as a result, Sorata says he can’t see Mashiro in his future if he is to focus on his game design career, which obviously pisses off Mashiro because she cares more about Sorata than her job as a mangaka and Sorata doesn't feel the same way. So they stop talking and we have constant waffling from Sorata on what to do, but still loving Mashiro, DESPITE NO DEVELOPMENT. So then this goes until graduation day where Sorata and Mashiro decide to break up and go their separate ways to focus on their jobs as Sorata feels he will always be struggling because he cannot achieve his dream while being with Mashiro. This isn't exactly the part that bothers me, but more so, we have a 4 year time skip after. After the time skip, Sorata graduates college, after achieving his goal of having a game company, he meets with Mashiro and they decide to get together. So within that 4 year period, not only do we miss out on the development Sorata had and dealing with being by himself, we also miss out on whatever development Mashiro had, because remember, she was someone who could barely take care of herself, but all of a sudden, she’s a competent woman now who is a mangaka able to take care of herself. The 4 year time skip in the end was really redundant and felt lazy because we missed out on so much development we could've gotten from the 2 main characters. Pretty much the romance subplots between the 2 were poorly handled where it became detrimental to the series. Not only do we miss out on main character development, but characters like Nanami, Iori, Kanna, etc. also have their development completely forgotten about. While we do get a side story about how Iori and Kanna’s relationship developed, Nanami is completely forgotten and pretty much has had 0 significance since leaving.
In short, the ending itself isn’t bad and does fit the feel of the series, but the execution and the way it went was so poorly done, which is why it is considered a bad ending.

We also stray heavily from a main theme in the show of Talent vs Hard Work. In the first 6 volumes, we constantly saw Sorata compare himself to the other members of Sakurasou house but after volume 6, it seemed that whole theme was completely stopped

In even shorter fashion,
DON'T READ THE LNS
STICK TO THE ANIME IF YOU WANT TO EXPERIENCE THIS SERIES

Hope u found this review, please thumbs up if u did
Here goes links I used as a reference a couple time