My Life in Smiley Book (Book One in Smiley Series) Review

I was "fortunate" enough to be given a book called My Life In Smiley by Anne Kalicky from an awesome company named NetGalley. I did this in exchange for an honest review. This is a cool opportunity that I had and will continue to do reviews with. This book comes out April 3 of this year, so it was really cool that I was one of the first people to read it, no matter what I felt about the book.

The story is about a new 6th grader, 5th when the story starts, and his troubles at middle school. It involves gym class, art class, pen pals, and all kinds of other things that you see and do during middle school. It was written in a journal (diary) for future humans.This all sounds good, but the original thoughts were very misleading.

Frankly, the book was not good. The "back-of-book" description made it sound like it was going to be something exciting in another type of universe, whereas it was really just a 5th/6th graders diary that was just a message to future humans. Which is cute, but it doesn't actually add anything. It also seems very Diary of a Wimpy Kid-esque. By that I mean it has weird drawings in it and way too large of a font. The large font and humongous pictures made a two-hundred-ten-page book take a total of three or four hours to read. Personally, I believe many things about the book were misleading and it didn't have much of a story. It was mainly an ordinary life, with no twists. The author had actually tried to add a twist, but it was a part of the non-existent story that I personally didn't really care for or about.

I do not at all recommend this book. The description is misleading and there is almost no important storyline. For kids who haven't quite made it to middle school, this over makes a lot of parts way more dramatic than needed. Frankly, it will probably just end making the kid worry about unrealistic problems. This is one of the few books I have ever come across that I did not like. Maybe I am so disliking of it because my expectations were raised too high (because of the publisher/author's description) but I still am not a fan.