Our crew of adventurers from Bríandalör are settling back into their regular lives of quests and exploration after the whole middle school debacle where they accidentally got transported into their Homerooms and Hall Passes game. But when artifacts from Suburbia (including June's cell phone) start appearing in Bríandalör, the friends know that something is up. They'll have to go back to Suburbia to stop the evil threatening the peace of the H&H world! This time, though, with the advent of Advanced Homerooms and Hall Passes: The Freshman Year of Futility, it will be hard not to "Blow It." Our adventurers will try to conquer fearsome high school milestones like become homecoming king/queen, getting a perfect score on standardized testing, and winning the Battle of the Bands.
With this being a sequel to a book I loved, I was definitely nervous to start this book. For me, this book was a bit of a slower start; words and pages that had been spent on introducing the Briandalorians to Suburbia in the first book weren't needed this time, so O'Donnell was able to focus more on setting up the plot. I'd been looking for the crew to get back to school as soon as possible, so I was a bit impatient during those first few chapters...After that, though, we got plenty of familiar faces as well as lots of new faces in the high school environment. Some parts of the book were very predictable (I wasn't too surprised by the big villain reveal), but even when you know what's coming, this book is still fun and funny. Personally, I loved the addition of music. Dying for the publishers to release an album of all the music cited in the book.
Overall, this sequel was very much in the vein of the first book, predictable, light-hearted fun. And honestly, I wouldn't change anything. Please tell me there will be a third book!