YMMV / Ascolta il Mio Cuore

• Esoteric Happy Ending: The three heroines Prisca, Elisa, and Rosalba pass the final exam brilliantly, can skip a grade and go to middle school without seeing Mrs. Sforza anymore, and they are all happy to know that Elisa's favorite uncle Leopoldo will get married to the wonderful Ondina. All very good, except that Prisca, Elisa, and Rosalba are studious rich girls who never had any problems at school (so their good grades in the exam were obvious since the beginning), and the main problem of the book is never resolved: the evil Mrs. Sforza keeps her job as a teacher and gets away with all her criminal behavior, while Adelaide and Iolanda (the main victims of the story) are forever expelled from school because of Mrs. Sforza's abuse, despite being both innocent.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: In the last few chapters, the Love Triangle between Elisa's two uncles who are both in love with Ondina, which culminates in Ondina's engagement with uncle Leopoldo. A bit unnecessary, especially since most people don't care about these characters, and much more serious issues are left unresolved, including the main conflict of the book.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: According to the cover, this book is "for readers age 11 and up", yet it features horrific child abuse, a Politically Incorrect Villain using derogatory and offensive words, and child characters using some vulgar expressions like "ti cagheresti addosso" ("you would shit yourself"). At the moment of Elisa's Precision F-Strike, the word "merda" ("shit") is not explicitly written, being replaced with a "m....", but the story makes it very obvious to all the readers which word is it, also because that "m...." was repeatedly used in the previous chapter by other kids, even in a literal context.
• The Woobie: Adelaide and Iolanda are two disadvantaged little girls who live in extreme poverty, they don't even have access to water in their homes, their parents are violently abusive, and their evil teacher despises them. Throughout the book, they are horribly mistreated, beaten, insulted, and humiliated by their Sadist Teacher just because she considers them "inferior", and at the end they are also kicked out of school for obviously unfair reasons.