Hot Mess

One enormous family plus one beach house equals a recipe for disaster for Greg Heffley. In book 19 of Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, Greg's cool summer vacation is feeling a lot more like a meltdown.

The Heffleys decamp to a cramped beach house for Gramma's birthday, and Greg quickly discovers that when you mix heaps of relatives, sweltering heat, and no air conditioning, something is going to boil over. There's no privacy, nowhere to hide, and way too many family secrets rising to the surface — not least the closely guarded ingredients behind Gramma's famous meatballs, a recipe the family has protected for years.

Between beach mishaps, warring aunts and uncles, and his own scheme to make it big online, Greg has one summer to unpack his family's mysteries before the vacation ends. A sun-soaked, laugh-out-loud story of family chaos and heatwave-level awkwardness, told in the cartoons-and-diary-entries format that made the series a global hit — for readers aged 8 to 12.