Cupcake Diaries

Today I’d like to talk about the book series:  cupcake diaries.

It is about 4  middle school girls : Katie, Mia, Emma and Alexis, who started the cupcake club. In the series, each book is presented as the diary of a club member, alternating among the four girls,  describing the lives of these girls, in which the cupcake club weaves their stories together.

The first book was told from the perspective of Katie. Katie is  the only child from a divorced family, who almost never sees her dad.  Her social circle is almost limited to her mom and her best friend Callie. Therefore, she is sensitive, a little dorky and feels somewhat insecure. 

Katie expected that middle school would be the same as before.  But  on the first day, she found that her best friend Callie has joined the popular girls club and is not close to her anymore.  Meanwhile,  she quickly met 3 new friends: Mia, Emma and Alexis.

Since all the girls are very impressed with the cupcake Katie took for lunch that day, they came out with the idea of starting a cupcake club, and that how all the stories started.

The second book is from the perspective of Mia.  Similar to Katie, Mia is also from a divorced family and lives with her mom.  But she is also close to her dad and  visit him every other week.  

Not really.   Her personality is quite different from Katie. Just like if both of their goals are to go swimming, Katie might put her foot into the water, sense it’s too cold and be unwilling to try it again. Mia , on the other hand might put her foot in, sense the cold, pull back but tries again. 

Mia is very open, and  has many friends with different backgrounds. Her mom is a fashion designer so she has a good fashion sense  and makes  friends from popular club.  She is also a nice girl and  part of the cupcake club. Besides, she has friends from Manhattan where she used to live.  

However, since her friends are so different, some might dislike each other. Sometime, Mia  feels  a little awkward to be in the middle.  In book II, Mia ’s mom hosted a fashion show and asked  the cupcake club to help provide snacks. And in this event, Mia did a good job of bonding her friends from different background together and they had a good time.  

Emma is from a big family  and has 3 siblings .  Mom, Can you imagine how chaotic a family with 4 kids can be?  Emma’s mom has some changes at work so she has to rearrange her hours, which completely messed up the family schedule.  Therefore Emma and her 2 big brothers need to take care of their youngest brother in turns and miss a lot of their after school activities. 

In book 3, Mia’s mother is getting married, and  the girls from the cupcake club are all invited to be the bridesmaids. They picked a beautiful but expensive dress for the wedding.  Being very considerate about her family’s condition, Emma wants to earn the dress money by herself without telling anyone. She did a lot of jobs  on top of her busy school schedule as well as her shift of taking care of the younger brother. Sometimes, she could mess up. Later on, her friends from the club found out her difficulties and helped her make a bargain  on the bridesmaid dress by providing free cupcakes to the bridal store for 2 months. 

At the wedding, they all had a good time. And at home Emma’s mom finally got her regular working schedule back.

Alexis lives with her parents and her sister Dylan. In book 4,  Dylan’s sweet sixteen is coming up.  She wants EVERY SINGLE THING ABOUT THE PARTY TO BE PERFECT,  and fussed about everything.  After lots and lots of discussion,  Dylan finally agreed that the cupcake club can provide dessert for the party. But when 3 well-designed and carefully-baked cupcake samples were presented to Dylan, she rejected all, saying : the good looking ones weren’t tasty, and the tasty one was not good looking. Dylan also criticized  the dress Alexis chose to wear for the party saying it was not appropriate since the color does not match the party’s theme colors.  Later that night, their parents lectured Dylan that she embarrassed Alexis twice in front of her friends.  

Feeling guilty of her previous behavior and  trying to make up to her sister, Dylan offered to help Alexis to get attention from Matt, to whom Alexis has a secrete crush.   Eventually, the cupcake club girls provided an amazing cupcake design for the party, and Dylan had a perfect sweet sixteen. 

There are a lot of books in this series.  Just as the 4 books being  introduced, each one is a diary by one of the 4 girls in the cupcake club.  Because I think what the cupcake girls did in the books are very interesting. When I was reading the book, I feel like I’m part of them and experience their activities, a lot of which  I think you won’t let me do in real life.