Okay, first, I love this series. I love the characters. I love the university setting. I love how weird it is.
But as a whole, this wasn’t a super great trade paperback. It covers several events that don’t really form a cohesive story arc, even if the individual components were highly amusing. This volume is basically split into three: the end of their first year at university, an incident over their summer break where the girls attend a music festival, and the beginning of their second year.
As always, Allison takes actual, everyday things that undergrads have to deal with, and then just amps them up slightly on the absurdity scale. Moving out of their dorms at the end of the first is accompanied by the literal bulldozing of the dorm building. A plagiarism scandal escalates into Esther and Ed utilizing the services of a scummy 24-hour lawyer. The incident at the music festival ends with a river of mud attacking everyone. And the girls’ new house comes with furniture that was previously destroyed by the boys who lived in the house previously, which leads to Esther’s first trip to IKEA. There is role-playing involved.
It gets harder and harder to actually write reviews for this series, FYI, because I’ve reached the place where the characters are real people. Objectivity is nearly gone. RIP objectivity.