Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hot Mess
Jeff Kinney
Puffin Books

In this 19th book of the series, Greg Heffley and his extended family are spending a summer holiday at a beach house, the very same cabin that his Mum’s family stayed in back in the day when she and her sisters were girls. The reason for this particular location is for Gramma’s seventy fifth birthday, she has requested a re-creation of a family photograph taken at their favourite holiday spot on Ruttyneck Island. As she’s head of the family, there’s no avoiding this and she certainly deserves her top of the hierarchy position on account of her incredible meatballs, the secret ingredients of which are a closely guarded secret. Now with mum determined to carry out Gramma’s wishes, there’s no getting out of it and Greg for one is of the opinion that this will be the worst holiday ever. The thought of spending so much time with his twin cousins, Malcomb and Malvin is appalling and he anticipates that as usual, whenever his Mum and her sister are in close proximity of one another there’s sure to be an argument. The ‘quality family time’ together that Mum hopes for is enough to make Greg shudder: more like the holiday is a recipe for disaster.
The accommodation itself gets things off to a terrible start. To say it’s cramped is a massive understatement and attempting to sleep on a blanket spread on the floor in front of the TV is about as far from satisfactory as Greg can get. Moreover, the so-called beach house, isn’t even on the beach, which means carrying all the gear there, carefully avoiding the part cordoned off as a protected area for nesting plovers. Then once on the beach proper, the items Mum has brought for playing with are ‘old-fashioned’ causing the diarist to write , ‘people must have been wired a little different back then, because none of this stuff was doing anything for me.’

Greg however does learn a few interesting things including some juicy family history about Mum and Cakey’s old boyfriends, as well as information about a canine social media star.
All in all a crazy, funny saga of family with surprises aplenty especially that final twist. My vegan sensibilities prevents me from offering readers a plate of Gramma’s meatballs to eat as they devour this book.