"The Year of Living Awkwardly" is the second book in the Chloe Snow's Diary series by Emma Chastain. The first book, "Confessions of A High School Disaster" follows Chloe Snow, a Massachusetts teen, through her freshman year of high school, and this book picks up right where the last one stopped, with Chloe working at the pool during the summer.
At her job, Chloe gets to know incoming freshman Grady, who has a crush on her. However, she is wary of dating a freshman because she's worried about what the people at school will think. It's not until they get back to school that she realizes she actually likes him back, but it's too late, as he is already dating the most popular and low-key meanest girl in her grade.
Chloe's mom, who has been living in Mexico for the past year, is trying to win a custody agreement to have her stay in Mexico for part of the year and attempts to manipulate Chloe through email into agreeing. Meanwhile, Chloe's dad is dating her English teacher/drama club director, and she has to deal with having another woman in the house that isn't her mom after a year of it being just her and her dad.
Fuckboy Mac Brody returns from college, revealing that he broke up with his girlfriend, with intentions to hook up with Chloe. Since Chloe had wished to be with him all last year, while he played around with her even though he had a girlfriend, she decides to give him a chance since Grady is already dating someone anyway. Ultimately, Chloe feels cheap and ashamed to be hooking up with Mac and tells him it's over because she deserves something more serious.
Chloe also has to deal with her best friend Hannah becoming friends with the same mean girl that is dating Grady, and Hannah not believing Chloe about her being mean. Her other best friend Tristan is heartbroken because his college boyfriend didn't want to keep up a long distance relationship, but agrees to go out with Elliot, a nice boy that's in drama club with him, Chloe, and Hannah, that visibly likes Tristan more than he likes Elliot.
After a subpar audition, Chloe is dismayed to find out that she's going to be part of the ensemble in their spring musical, "South Pacific," after playing Maria in "The Sound of Music" last year. She decides not to quit because she'd miss her friends too much if she did. Chloe additionally thinks, during a warm-up exercise backstage before opening night, that being in the ensemble has led her to get to know a lot of the people in the cast, and now she actually cares a lot more about the other people doing the energy circle with her, as opposed to last year when she only interacted with the other leads.
I would highly recommend this book; Chloe is a very relatable character that goes through emotions we can all understand and has experiences that are very familiar to any reader.
