It tries to be funny, deep, even a cautionary tale, but it really doesn't hit the mark on any of these things. It's hard to form a solid criticism of Dear Diary, because there's not enough substance there to critique. When she tracks down childhood friends (and enemies), she doesn't get much out of them - nothing you can't experience firsthand by finding your old classmates online and asking them what they remember about you. The author tries to juxtapose her adult self with her teen self, but she actually comes off as as self-absorbed adult who thinks she's much more interesting than she is. Once I got a better look at the book, I realized that it was not just for laughs or nostalgia: the author descended into heroin addiction during her teen years, and she uses the diary entries to track her journey into drug use. The idea/gimmick is that the author goes through the diary she kept through her teen years, comments on the entries, and tries to track down the people she knew at the time to get their perspective on things. When I first picked up Dear Diary from a stack of vacation reading, I thought it was going to be a funny read. She may be sober now and she may have gone through the school of hard knocks like a real champ but she still comes across like an immature, spoiled upper middle class Gen-Xer. While she is a decent writer, and the entries aren't quite as boring as one reviewer would have you believe, I was ultimately left with the feeling that I really don't like or care about Leslie that much.
She seems to have taken thinly veiled delight in the fact that, although her middle school friends tormented and ousted her, they were also tormented and ousted by each other. or even tormenting your friends, for that matter. Nothing in her "update" commentary is particularly dissuading about drug use. I also thought her description of her first time in rehab had some bittersweet, and in one case, hilarious, moments.īut on the other hand, as another reviewer mentions, I have a really hard time with her claim that she published the book to let girls know they aren't alone in what they might be going through. There are definitely some sections - particularly her middle and high school entries - where I felt like "OMG, that's EXACTLY how I was feeling at that age." And her updated commentary on some of those passages is really spot on and, in some cases, very funny. I can't say I hated Dear Diary but I'm not a total convert like all the other reviewers here.
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