As a semi-autobiographical author shooting for broad appeal with a highly personalized account of their own life, Amman walks a tightrope as readers rejoin Leda at 19, attending college and searching for happiness: “In high school, I had been a big (petite) fish in a small pond, but at the University of Milano, I was just a dim petite fish in a pond full of Evil Centis. Did he have sharp teeth?” The aforementioned “Evil Centi” refers to the protagonist’s long and tortuous relationship with a young man named Claudio Centi who occupies substantial real estate inside Leda’s head. So does another fellow named Sergio, for whom Leda harbors an incendiary attraction. Beset by uncertainty, Leda decides to employ the scientific method to understand happiness, “diligently noting both positive and negative results,” which leads to a list of 23 rules to live by. These axioms include, “One trauma will not define the rest of your life, unless you let it” and “Whatever your parents pass down to you is a start. What you do with it, though…that’s up to you”; not at all bad bits of advice for anyone just starting out their adult lives in an increasingly chaotic and often unfathomable world. Leda’s engaging first-person narration is immediate and direct: “I could hear the sound of my melting heart—or was it my underwear?” (it’s funny, too). At this point in Amman’s ongoing series, reengaging with Leda’s travails feels like checking in with an old friend. For readers just meeting them for the first time, this entry will likely prove compelling enough to elicit curiosity about what’s gone on before. The events recounted here transpire around the late 1990s, and the text includes heavy e-mail exchanges between Leda and their on-again-off-again paramours and crushes—so, there’s nostalgic appeal as well for readers who lived through the post-grunge era and, like Leda, enjoyed rocking out to The Offspring.