Does your life revolve around drama, mean girls, and crushes? Nikki’s life is full
of things that make her laugh out loud, feel ashamed, and give her butterflies in her stomach. She is faced with middle school. It’s a place where you want to fit in... a place where nobody really fits in. MacKenzie is the mean girl. More than just mean... pure evil!! But Nikki has some help from her two best friends, Chloe and Zoey. She knows she’ll get through it.

Out of the series, Dork Diaries, I think Tales From a Not So Smart Miss Know-It-All is one of the best. It is about a girl named Nikki who joins the school newspaper as an advice columnist... and nobody has given her any letters!! Luckily, her two best friends can help her out. They make big posters telling people to write to Miss Know-It-All (which is Nikki’s secret identity). Soon, she’s getting a boatload of questions from people who desperately need advice! Nikki sets a goal to answer every question!

I enjoyed this book because it really captures what middle school is like in real life. The friendship situations, the boy and girl dilemmas, the anxiety are all part of middle school and are clearly shown in this book. As a reader, I was able to put myself in the place of the main character, Nikki. I feel as if parts of her life connect perfectly with mine.

The author of this series, Rachel Renee Russell, based sections of the book on her own life experiences as a fourteen year old girl and her two daughters’ lives. The way she writes this book, in a diary format, pulls you in because the main character is writing to herself while you are reading her thoughts. What I didn’t like about this book is that some of the characters are stereotypes, such as the jocks, the nerds, the embarrassing parents, the annoying little sister, etc. In the real world, not everyone fits into a specific category like the book implies.

Overall, I thought this book was a wonderful story on a middle school life. I would recommend it to girls entering or currently in middle school. It is a quick, but entertaining read. Out of five stars, I give this book a four. I hope this book will help YOU survive the traumas of middle school.