Title: Belzhar
Author: Meg Wolitzer
Genre: Fantasy YA
Format: Hardback
Length: 264 pages
Publisher: Dutton Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: 1st January 2014
My Rating: ★★ (2 stars)
Goodreads | Storygraph
Synopsis:
If life were fair, Jam Gallahue would still be at home in New Jersey with her sweet British boyfriend, Reeve Maxfield. She’d be watching old comedy sketches with him. She’d be kissing him in the library stacks.
She certainly wouldn’t be at The Wooden Barn, a therapeutic boarding school in rural Vermont, living with a weird roommate, and signed up for an exclusive, mysterious class called Special Topics in English.
But life isn’t fair, and Reeve Maxfield is dead.
Until a journal-writing assignment leads Jam to Belzhar, where the untainted past is restored, and Jam can feel Reeve’s arms around her once again. But there are hidden truths on Jam’s path to reclaim her loss.
From New York Times bestselling author Meg Wolitzer comes a breathtaking and surprising story about first love, deep sorrow, and the power of acceptance.
My Review:
I bought this book a long time ago and never got around to reading it. In the bid to clear my hoard I decided to sit down and give it a read.
This story follows Jam, who following the loss of the boy she was in love with became inconsolable and was sent to The Wooden Barn for emotionally fragile, highly intelligent teens. She became a part of the extremely elite group Special Topics. They are given a red leather notebook, which will change their lives. I loved the concept of this novel; the journals and Belzhar but one of my main issues was that it didn’t seem to go anywhere. The other big issue I had with this story was the ending – the plot twist that came which I won’t spoil really annoyed me. The issue that’s revealed doesn’t seem to get addressed at all.
Moving onto the characters, there was a good opportunity here for the teenagers to get some development. For the reader to learn about different events that could lead to this emotional fragility. My main issue was that there was no development. There was no gradual build to a friendship between the main characters, and I couldn’t tell you who one character was to the next.
In conclusion, Belzhar had an interesting concept, but it fell flat for me and it isn’t a book that I would likely read again.
One Comment
Pingback: