Adrian Mole is in school no longer. But he’s not as far along in his life as he’d like. He’s in Oxford, living in the box room of the love of his life Pandora Braithwaite. However, she is married to someone else and studying several languages, well on her way to her doctorate. While Adrian sleeps alone, trying to find time to work on his novel, Lo! The Flat Hills of My Homeland, Pandora sleeps with a succession of lovers and prepares to conquer all of England.

Adrian works at the Department of the Environment, having lied about his education. He has been tasked with keeping track of an endangered group of newts, and when a coworker gets fired, Adrian has to take over the badgers also. It’s a lot of pressure, and Pandora is telling him that he has to move out. He finds a couple of different rooms to let and flirts with the woman working at the newsagents, Bianca. But his inexperience and insecurity takes over as he tries to figure out if she could be interested in him or not. He spends most of his evenings babysitting or alone with Jake Westmoreland, the hero of his novel, and resenting the fact that his former high school bully Barry Kent has written a bestseller called Dork’s Diary that Adrian has a suspicion is actually about him.

But eventually, Oxford turns on him. He loses the room he was renting, he loses his job, and he has no choice but to move back home.

Back in Leicester, he is forced to live with his mother, his stepfather, and his younger sister Rosie. He works for a while for his father’s new girlfriend, where he sells home alarm systems. But he keeps in touch with Bianca, just in case a new room opens up in Oxford and she finds out about it. But Bianca isn’t happy in Oxford and sets out for London. She invites Adrian to visit, and they end up falling in love and moving in together.

Bianca had found a waitressing job in Soho at a trendy restaurant called Savages, and she gets Adrian a position washing dishes there also. He’s happy for a time in Soho, working at Savages, polishing his novel, and spending time with Bianca. But as Adrian’s love life never does seem to work out for long, he is soon single again, but he’s still in London and working at Savage’s.

There are heartbreaks for Adrian, and he struggles to find his place. But by the end of he book, he finds himself on a Greek Island, enjoying a writing retreat that inspires him, and thinking of the beautiful waitress from Nigeria who recently started at the restaurant and of his friends who are waiting for him to come back home.

I cannot tell you how many times I have read Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years, or any of the other Adrian Mole books, but I keep coming back to them because they are all old friends now. When I need a break from reality for a bit, I can always sit down with an Adrian Mole novel and lose myself in all the idiosyncrasies of his world. I had been itching to read this one again, with the newts and Savages and the trip to Russia with the bananas. I do adore this book, seeing Adrian start to truly come into his own. My only complaint with this Kindle version is that the book finishes around 60 percent, and the rest is an extended excerpt from the next book. I read it all, of course, and loved it, but I thought the length of the excerpt was excessive. Otherwise, Sue Townsend delivers another smart, funny, poignant look at growing up, feeling like an outsider, finding your voice, and falling in love.