If you're familiar with Milk Morinaga's work, then you know that her artwork is fairly uniformly awesome in any given work she makes. This series is no exception and might even be that much stronger for the fact that parts of Girl Friends was based off of her own experiences in high school. I'm not sure how much in this is fact and how much is fiction, but for the most part this series has a realistic flavor to it that makes the series that much sweeter for its inclusion. If you picked this second volume up in error, then no huge worries. You'll miss out on a bit, but the story line here is easy and gentle enough to pick up and follow along with relatively easily. You just won't enjoy it as much as if you'd started with volume one. 
 Art-wise, this series remains strong. It's pretty common to see artwork decay over the length of a series, but Morinaga definitely puts a lot of love into her drawings. There are of course some scenes that are prettier or have more detail than others, but you'll get that with every series and even a "bad" drawing by Morinaga is still pretty darn good. There's a reason why she's considered by many to be one of, if not THE Queen of Yuri. 
 Story-wise, Girl Friends has some incredibly strong points to it. One is, as I mentioned earlier, the series' realism. While there are still some parts to it that feel a little manga-tastic in that they seem a little overly idealized, the series has its strength in that it doesn't fall into some of the typical manga story lines. There is no bullying, no uber-dramatic scenes where the sexuality of the main characters comes out into the open, nor are there scores of rivals pouring out of the woodwork to stand in the way of our two would-be lovers. Any problems that come about are generally due to Mariko and Akko's own insecurities and misunderstandings. This is probably one of the reasons why this will strike true with so many readers regardless of their sexuality. You'll recognize the universal relationship troubles and hurdles that any couple faces. The only slight issue with this is that there are sort of two endings. There's one part that would serve as a perfect stopping point, then two more pages that just feel very slightly tacked on. It won't ruin anything for anyone and some will actually like seeing it, but it just feels a little extraneous. 
 Overall this just confirms that I'm definitely looking forward to seeing SSE's release of further Milk Morinaga titles. The editing in the second volume is definitely better than in the first one, but apart from the entire volume being written in LOLCat speech, nothing could interrupt or ruin a Morinaga book. On a side note, now I kind of want to see someone do a chapter in LOLCat.