A charming illustrated middle grade novel with a surprisingly relatable protagonist

With a lot of humor and heart and relatable themes such as fitting in, making friends, and embarrassing families, I can see this being very popular in my 5th grade class. The humor is just edgy enough to be cool for a too-cool-for-school middle schooler. Besides how funny it is, my favourite thing about this book was the wholesome and genuine friendship between Dante and Virgil. I often see friendships like this one mirrored in the boys in my classroom and I believe we should be promoting positive male relationships among the boys of this generation.
I felt the mythology references were a little lacking for how this book was marketed. There’s a lot of room for the author to add more fun characters and gags to get kids interested in the topic.

Imagine Diary of a Wimpy Kid got mixed up with a fantasy world where the boy is a demon/devil. The strengths center around the witty humor, weaknesses, and likability of Dante. The mini pictures will be a great hit with the graphic novel/young crowd. The cover art and concept will hit the mark for young readers (based on my 8-year-old's reaction).

Unfortunately, there is a disconnect between my experience and the character, which made it difficult to enjoy. This could be fixed if 1. The age changes from a high school student to a junior high (middle school) student. And 2. Work on modifying the word usage to be more suitable for middle-grade readers (e.g., remove swearing).

As it stands, I honestly see it as a 3/5-star read.

This would be a no-fail hit with fans of "quasi-graphic-novel" type books such as Diary of a Wimpy Kid (in fact, it's in a very similar style to Wimpy Kid). However, the twist is that our socially challenged, insecure young kid is some sort of demon creature living in the town of Brimstone, where people drink Smoka-Cola, the nearby volcano Mount Dodgy is always threatening to erupt, and firemen are only called when fires go out. Dante is starting high school and desperately wants to reinvent himself as a "cool kid," but in his world of mythological creatures, chaos quickly ensues. It's not an amazing literary classic, but the setting is creative and it would definitely be popular with readers.