Title: Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck
Title in Spanish: Diario de Greg 8. Mala Suerte
Author: Jeff Kinney
Editorial: Amulet Books
N° of pages: 217
English level: Basic
Synopsis: Greg Heffley’s on a losing streak. His best friend, Rowley Jefferson, has ditched him and finding new friends in middle schools is proving to be a tough task. To change his fortunes, Greg decides to take a leap of faith and turn his decisions over to chance. Will a roll of the dice turn thing around, or is Greg’s life destined to be just another hard-luck story?
No matter how nice you are to some people, they’ll turn their back on you the second they get the chance.
Personal opinion
The books of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series have been with me since childhood so they have a really special place in my reader heart although I never got to read them all. But this year when I was in the Panama Book Fair I saw them by pure coincidence so I went to take a look at them and there were MORE THAN 10 BOOKS published in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series! I decided to start reading them from where I left them and picked the eighth book in the series to see if I will still love them like I did when I was little or my opinion will change when reading them as a teenager… It didn’t.
In the eighth book of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Hard Luck, we meet Greg. A boy who had been ditched by his best friend, Rowley, for his new girlfriend. Now Greg has to step up his game to find new friends and to keep dealing with his family and with all the problems that he always managed to get himself involved in. Honestly, I don’t remember my childhood being as half of stressful as Greg’s.
I remember that when I was finishing the first paragraph I was already laughing. I don’t know how it does it, but the books of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid are simple and short books that contain a humor that can take a laugh from anyone. I 
remember that when I was little I heard my mom laughing and when I got to where she was it happened that she was reading one of the books in the series. Jeff Kiney’s humor doesn’t know of an age limit.
This book certainly made me had a good time. Undoubtedly, my favorite parts were the days when Greg tells us about the days he spends with his family on Easter. I COULDN’T STOP LAUGHING. This book took me to those moments when I was a little girl and laughed over and over again with a book of the Diary of Wimpy Kid in my hands.
Mom’s always saying that friends will come and go but family is forever. Well, if that’s true, I could be in for a rough ride.
The only problem that I noticed when reading it this time was that the main character, Greg, can be sometimes too selfish. Even more if it was about his best friend, Rowley. Sometimes, when he was talking about Rowley, I felt that more than a best friend to him he was like a pet or butler who did 
everything that he wanted and just for that reason he wanted him back. I understand that the books outstand by their sarcasm and exaggerated humor but this time I felt that Greg didn’t behave as he should with his best friend.
I guess that it is because of the fact that I read it with a different point of view, a teenager point of view instead of a child point of view. Unlike Greg, I have grown up and he has not. But for that same thing, I think that all readers, big or little, could see themselves in Greg more than once.
This book was exactly what I needed. I felt that I had read a lot of dense books in little time and, even if I loved all of them, I felt that I needed my next reading to be something more light and Hard Luck was the perfect selection.
Now, is it the best book for little kids? Does it only features good moral examples? Are there characters to who we can refer as role models? … No. Regardless of that I invite you to read or if you are parents to buy it to your children because even if it doesn’t contain phrases like “Happiness is sharing” or “Eating vegetables is fun”, this book promotes two of my favorite thing in the world: laughter and reading.
That taught me that even if you try your best, someone’s just gonna mooch off your hard work.