THE YEAR OF LIVING AWKWARDLY

Chloe Snow’s freshman year was characterized by highs and lows, and her sophomore year is shaping up to offer much of the same.

Last year, Chloe was the lead in the school musical and received the occasional attention of an older guy. She also grew apart from her best friend and suffered a bout of intense cyberbullying, all while her flaky mother trotted off to Mexico and her parents’ marriage fell apart. The series’ second installment reads like a watered-down version of the first. Chloe’s mother is still in Mexico, occasionally popping up in Chloe’s inbox to wreak emotional havoc. Her relationship with her best friend is once again strained. Mean-girl bullying rears its ugly head again, this time in person. Chloe continues to drop in moments of social awareness acknowledging her many privileges as a “straight, white, upper-middle-class person,” but she immediately discards such realizations, returning to her own self-absorbed drama. The biggest change is that she spends this year obsessing over a younger guy with a girlfriend instead of an older one. Those who loved Chloe’s first diary may enjoy reading much of the same again, but the narrative offers little to anyone else.

Filled with the whining and pining of a sophomore girl’s diary and sadly lacking in substance.