Reviews

Go Ask Alice/Jay's Journal by Beatrice Sparks

amieeatsea's review against another edition

1.0

Two stars for the kind of gross “dare” esq message. But I have to admit, I loved this book when I read it as a teenager. Didn’t scare any of us away from drugs though going to be honest.

tapsandtomes's review

4.0

I love diaries, especially when they are real diaries from real people. This one is especially intense, I don't know how she managed to keep writing when she was so strung out, but it really gave us a great view into an addict's life. I won't tell you how it ends, just that it ends exactly the way you expect it to.

verycoolsarah's review

4.0

When I first heard about this book from a friend I was told that it was non-fiction and it made the book "Go Ask Alice" seem more interesting and life-changing than if I was first told that it was mostly fiction. I read the first third of the book and was very surprised at how frightening the story was but mostly I was surprised by how even though I had never met the main character of "Go Ask Alice" I felt as though I knew her personally. The way she wrote was very personal and the entire story seemed as though what happened to the main character (her name is not given in the story but is commonly referred to as either Alice or Carla)could happen to anyone, which in reality it could. I then was confused by how some of these diary entries were published because there was a note that the following entries where found written on paper-bags, napkins, etc. I decided to research this book to see if it was actually true and found that most of the entries were written by the editor and only a few of the entries were original entries from the girl the book is about. I even learned that some of the entries were about things that did not even happen to the "author" of the diary. To be honest I was relieved and greatly disappointed. I feel as though changing her diary to make it more interesting or frightening is extremely disrespectful to Carla/Alice. I feel as though leaving her writing completely unchanged except for names (solely for privacy reasons) would be more impacting to readers than changing a large amount of her story just to frighten the readers. Over all though I found this book impacting and life changing but I am not sure about whether or not I would recommended it to other people.

kazbrek's review

2.0

[review from 2012]

I just read Go Ask Alice. I’d been avoiding it for a while, even though my mother said I should read it. And I just read it and well, I don’t know what to say. It’s kind of an odd book. And I’m tired. Ugh.

I didn't like it, really, but it was very real and frightening.