So recently, I wanted to do some book reviews since I don’t feel that many people appreciate them enough. But what book should I review you’re probably asking if you didn’t read the title of this article. I wanted to cover a book I don’t hear many people talk about whether it’s good or bad, but also I see a lot at libraries and bookstores. The book in question I'm referring to is Dork Diaries: Tales from a NOT-SO-Fabulous Life by Rachel Renee Russell.
I was always curious about the Dork Diaries series since like I said before, I frequently see these books at libraries and bookstores, but I don’t hear many people talk about them. Is it because while there are 15 books in the series, to date, there are no adaptations of this series like movies or shows? Is it because many people dismiss it as a Diary of a Wimpy Kid rip-off for girls? Is Dork Diaries a rip-off of Diary of a Wimpy Kid? So I went to my local library to pick up a copy and read it for myself to find out.
I came into this thing with an open mind because since most of the rip-off complaints were from Wimpy Kid fans, I thought they were just exaggerating. I would say I was true in that statement as while I wouldn’t consider it complete plagiarism, there are points in the story where I can see where the complaints are coming from. Outside of the titles and both stories being formatted on lined paper, the main character of this story, Nikki Maxwell, goes to school, wants to be famous and when she first receives a diary from her mother, she doesn’t like it at first, just like Greg Heffley, the main character of Diary of a Wimpy Kid. However that’s where I think the main similarities end as there are many more differences I can write about the two. For example, Greg didn’t want a diary because he found it too feminine while Nikki didn’t want one because it’s an old thing to do. Greg goes to a public school while Nikki goes to a private school. Greg is more or less stated to be disliked by most of the people at his school with Rowley Jefferson usually being his only friend and while Nikki also seems to feel that way, from what I read, it seems to be exaggerated as a noticeable amount of people seem to like her or just have a neutral opinion about her. Greg is certain he’ll be famous despite these books usually ending where he started, sometimes even less popular while Nikki seems to have more ups and downs with the ending of the first book implying she’s building her way up the popularity chain.
Like I said, I can list so many differences between the two but I'm gonna stop there because: 1. I just want to jump straight into the actual story and talk about that and 2. I want to avoid making comparisons to Diary of a Wimpy Kid as much as I can. I want to see to see if the story stands on its own and not being compared to anything else. So let’s just pretend Diary of a Wimpy Kid doesn’t exist at this moment and let’s dive into Dork Diaries: Tales from a NOT-SO-Fabulous Life. Also I will be discussing spoilers so if you want to read the book, I recommend you do so before reading the rest of this review.
So the story is about Nikki Maxwell, a dorky girl with a passion for drawing and art, who recently got accepted into Westchester Country Day, a private school that while not specified in the book, is implied to be in Westchester, New York. Nikki isn’t really a straight A student or has any amazing achievements to be accepted here as the only reason she’s attending WCD is because he got a scholarship from her dad’s job as a bug exterminator. It’s not long before she makes enemies with Mackenzie Hollister, one of the most popular girls at WCD and happens to have lockers right next to each other. However, Nikki is not alone as she makes friends with Chloe Garcia and Zoey Franklin, two dorky girls who have a real passion for reading and books (most writers are writers). She also makes friends with Brandon Roberts, a boy with a passion for photography and the obvious love interest. As the story goes, Nikki goes from a girl with pretty low self-esteem to at least knowing that she isn’t alone in this dark world.
The story is overall ok, it’s not particularly original or even amazing. Nikki does learn that she has at least three people who care about her in a school that she mostly hates but apparently there’s a moral to be yourself and appreciating your dorkiness but I’m not seeing that. Nikki isn’t really much of a dork in my opinion outside of writing in a diary and being friends with two nerds who love to read. She’s in what was generally popular when the book was first published (2009). She loves teen pop like Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers, Justin Timberlake, she’s into High School Musical and she basically worships Tyra Banks. I would say because she’s into art but Mackenzie, one of the most popular girls, is also into art and even competes in an art competition. I felt like the story should’ve been Nikki appreciating the friends she has even if it’s very small but Nikki quickly makes friends with Chloe and Zoey once she finds out that they too hate Mackenzie. In fact, when Chloe and Zoey briefly throw Nikki under the bus, Nikki is very sad about this revelation.
The biggest problem I have with the story though, is Nikki’s relationship with her family. Although at one point, she does call her parents well meaning, earlier in the story, she calls her mom “clinically brain dead” and later blames her for not knowing about an allergic reaction she has because her mother gave birth to her and therefore knows everything. She also believed at one that her parents were planning on sending her to a mental hospital after suffering a nervous breakdown. Nikki and her father do have a moment near the end of the story where he drives Nikki to school after almost being late and even thanks him for it but the story isn’t really isn’t about Nikki learning to love her family even if they do embarrassing stuff. The only really important thing about her family is Nikki taking her grandmother’s advice to heart about being “a chicken or a champion.”
Another thing I have to bring up is the pop culture references, oh god the references. There are so many references in this book to things that were popular in 2009 that when this book was republished years later, a good chunk of these references were removed due to their popularity having waned since the book was initially published. A reference to CSI: Miami got removed as that show has been off the air since 2012 and said show being rated TV-14 despite the books being 9-14. A reference to the Ashton Kutcher era of Punk’d got removed since he hasn’t hosted the show since 2007 and that show also being TV-14. Reference to Kutcher’s marriage to Demi Moore also got cut due to their divorce in 2013. There was also a reference to the Olsen twins which I think were even dated in 2009. I don’t remember if that reference got cut though but I’d be more surprised if it wasn’t. References to the Price is Right, Michael Jackson, Cyndi Lauper and the Bee Gees survived since I assume these things are decades old and are still well known as of this review was written (2023).
For the book’s art style, it seems to be going for an animesque kind of thing. It’s fine, it could be a lot worse but it’s just a typical cutesy art style. I do appreciate it when the book changes style when making a joke, another typical anime cliche but I don’t mind too much. The main complaint I have is that Russell didn't know how to shade since usually a character has darker hair in a black and white drawing, a brunette would usually have their hair shaded in. When I first read this, I thought was a blonde but from what I've seen in colored illustrations and most fan art, she’s actually a brunette. I don’t seem to be alone in that as a handful of fan art i’ve seen does color her with blonde hair which I assume is an honest mistake on their parts.
Now for the characters themselves, they’re a mixed bag as well. Nikki is a character who I want to succeed but not like “become famous” but more “I want to see her become a better person.” Her fatal flaw is that she has very low self esteem as she keeps saying everyone hates her but we only really see Mackenzie and Jessica express that hatred. She also seems to be a bit bipolar in my opinion as in one chapter she gets an invitation from Mackenzie thinking it’s for her but actually Mackenzie wanted her to pass it to Jessica. She initially blames herself for jumping to conclusions but in the next chapter, she blames Mackenzie for inviting and then uninviting her even though she doesn’t know that. Another problem as I brought up earlier is that we also don’t get to see Nikki learn to love her family more outside of small scenes with her father and grandmother.
Mackenzie Hollister is, of course, the antagonist of this novel and I don’t like her. Of course, we’re not to like her since she's, you know, the antagonist but there’s nothing really to enjoy about her. She’s not an antagonist we love to hate, just hate. Mackenzie just hates Nikki because I guess Nikki acted a bit weird to her in one class involving an invitation. I assume later books try to give her a Freudian excuse why she’s so mean but on this book’s own, it just feels like she’s there because someone has to be the antagonist.
It’s also not a story without a love interest and said love interest is of course, Brandon Roberts. You would think him being the only important male character (besides Nikki’s dad) would be my favorite but no. He’s not a very interesting character either in my opinion. Maybe even more so than Mackenzie since at least she’s cartoonishly evil so she tries to be memorable. Brandon is just a nice guy and a photographer and maybe likes Nikki back but for all we know in this book alone, he only pities Nikki due to Mackenzie’s bullying. Maybe if he was a dork too as with his interest in photography I could actually relate to him in some way but I guess Mackenzie couldn’t like him either. Oh yeah, there’s also a sort of love triangle between Nikki, Mackenzie and Brandon. I say “sort of” since it’s not really a major plot point but it’s shown that not only Nikki is head over heels for Brandon but Mackenzie also has interest in Brandon from the few scenes we see them together. Why does she like Brandon? I have no idea. He’s like the only guy who’s not into Mackenzie and meanwhile every other boy seems to be a simp for her. My best guess is that Mackenzie isn’t actually into Brandon but since he’s the only boy who isn’t a simp, she views getting to Brandon’s heart as a challenge. If there is one thing I can give a positive to is that he inverts the more modern women are wiser trope. Most of the female characters are wacky and can go very over the top but Brandon (and to a lesser extent Nikki’s dad) is the calmest and sanest character in this book. I want to like him but like I said, he’s missing a lot of important character components in my opinion.
Now for some of the supporting characters. Nikki’s parents are your typical run of the mill good parents. Now despite what I just said, I'm not saying that’s a bad thing. I always prefer stories with good parents like Bandit and Chilli as opposed to stories with mentally ill parents like Timmy Turner’s parents. Russell could have easily made a joke that like the mother was cheating on the father but she didn’t. Although there’s not much personality to the parents outside that they love their daughter deeply, I'm willing to give them a pass compared to Brandon since they weren’t meant to be as important as Brandon was supposed to be.
Then there’s Brianna, Nikki’s little sister. We’re meant to see her as an annoying brat but honestly I didn’t hate her. Granted I don’t love her either but a lot of the “annoying” things she does is because she’s a 6 year old girl. Of course she’s gonna act like that. And just to bring Diary of a Wimpy Kid back into existence for a moment, after seeing what Manny Heffely has done, Brianna is more like a saint. Alright, Wimpy Kid is going back into the pocket dimension now. Brianna is probably in the middle but closer to the higher tier of characters, lower than the parents but higher than Mackenzie and Brandon.
The last supporting character to bring is Nikki’s grandmother. I don’t think it’s stated in this book which side of the family she’s on but that’s not important. She’s the one that gives Nikki some arc words along the lines of you either woman up or chicken out. I think she’s meant to the one who Nikki inherits her “dorkiness” from. Nikki’s grandmother is a big game show enthusiast, especially with the Price is Right, is good at breakdancing for her age, and seems to be into pop music much younger than her going from her humming Girls Just Want to Have Fun, a 1980s song despite me assuming she has to be born by the 1940s the latest. She doesn’t appear a lot in the story, I think it’s just a scene or two but I feel like I shouldn’t mention her since Nikki occasionally brings her up.
There are plenty of other side characters like the school faculty and other students and Mackenzie’s family but I either don’t remember them or they appear for so little I don’t have a lot to say about for more than a sentence. But I still left two important characters out and that was on purpose because I wanted to save the best for last.
The last two characters I want to bring up are easily my favorite characters in the whole book. Those two being Chloe Garcia and Zoey Franklin. They’re the real dorks here as if there’s one thing they love more than each other (probably platonically but what do I know) is books. During their freetime, they’re always working at the library and they love to quote random obscure authors like Ralph Waldo Emerson (ok he’s probably not “obscure” but I assume most people haven’t read his work). While Chloe’s family isn’t anything to note about, Zoey’s family is interesting but it’s implied that her parents are divorced as Zoey mentions having both a mother and a stepmother. That’s probably one of the biggest praises I’ll give to this book. Even if they don’t outright say it, it takes balls to imply that something like that has happened. Like what I mentioned before, having the parents being a couple who cannot stand and abuse each other but don’t get divorce is common in fiction. They even have their own character arc outside of Nikki’s story. So apparently the school was having this thing where whoever won this contest would get to go New York City to meet some famous author and knowing Chloe and Zoey, they really want to go. They so much want to go that they’re willing to run away and live in the NYC sewers if it means they get to meet their favorite authors (although it was established earlier that Chloe and Zoey come from rich families so couldn’t they ask said families to take them even if they lost). So Nikki wants to help the two by giving other students tattoos (it’s not the kind that are injected into your skin in case you’re worried) but if they have to take out a book before they can get one. Chloe and Zoey see that Nikki’s plan is working and so they take advantage of her by making her do tattoos whenever she isn't in class. Nikki gets fed up with this after a few days and quits. The three briefly go their separate ways until Chloe and Zoey apologize to Nikki for taking advantage of her. I wish we would’ve gotten to see Chloe and Zoey realize the error of their ways as it seemed like they had a whole arc but since it’s only from Nikki’s point of view, we sadly didn’t get to see it.
I’m gonna go out and say it, they should’ve been the main characters. They feel like more like dorks than Nikki, they have an actual want, they want books and meet their favorite authors, they’re more likable overall than Nikki, they have a conflict when they take advantage of Nikki and then they have an offscreen arc to think to themselves and then apologize to Nikki that want they did was wrong. The only real complaint about them is you noticed that I've barely only brought up one or the other, it’s almost always both of them. There basically just one character split into two with no difference in personality. I don’t why there are two of them as it also results in constantly drawing another character but my best guess is that they needed a latina and black character. Which is weird because despite author Nikki being based on Rachel Renee Russell and her daughter Nikki Russell, who are both black, I’m told Nikki is white. Since Chloe’s supposed to be latina and Zoey’s supposed to black, I think Zoey should have been scrapped, move her African heritage to Nikki and move the divorced parents angle to Chloe. That way, there’s a smaller cast, there’s still a black character and Rachel Renee Russell can draw one less character.
So at the end of the day, what are my overall thoughts on Dork Diaries? While I do think the series gets too much hate, I don’t think the book is that good either. A questionable story, a protagonist that is a bit too unlikable, a huge overdose of pop culture references, a decent art style with a nitpick on my part, and a mixed bag of characters ranging from “boring” to “I wish I could see more of them.” Despite all that I said, I don’t regret reading this book as I finally got to see something that a lot of people have talked about. I still see a lot of potential in this kind of story as there were some elements I liked. I’m hoping that later books improve on the criticisms I’ve given and fleshes out the positives I gave.
Would I recommend this to the target audience? Not really. As I said, Nikki doesn’t feel like a good role model and doesn’t relate to (at least what I think) a dork is. That being said, I’m sure many preteen girls like it as it appears constantly in bookstores and libraries and has 15 main books and a handful of spin-offs as of this writing.
Would I recommend this to older audiences? Even more of a no. A lot of the story and jokes make references to media that have become outdated and it’s heavily focused on the younger characters.
So my final score for this book is 5/10. Closer to a 6 than it is a 4. Note that this score might change in the future depending on whether my opinion changes or to better compare it to later books.
Welp, I’m finally done writing this review. I started writing this back in June 2023. It’s now February 2024. This has been sitting on a shelf for a while with long gaps in between me writing. So once this review is posted, I'm gonna start reading the second as soon as I can. I’ll try not to make the gaps between me finishing the reading and me finishing writing the next review. I’m not making any promises as I’m bad with promises but I assume it won’t be as long.