I do agree that the story has been watered down lately. The beginning premise was fun: city boy in a country town, southerner in snow, the clash between prim and proper upbringing vs. carefree gal, et cetera. Hopefully this arc we will see our MC forced to choose between having monster mom dictating his life or actually getting on with his own life. He was thinking along those lines at the end of last chapter after all middle of chap. 45 actually. Sheesh.
Oh, and those of you calling for the axe: just drop it. This is the editor pressuring the author to drag out the story.
I love that they IMMEDIATELY call him out on this shit. It's not like his reasoning is unreasonable on the one hand, but on the other wow dude for real?