Go Ask Alice -Anonymous --Rachel Valdivia

Go Ask Alice by Anonymous is a great book if you want to read about someone who is also a teenager going through a rough time. This book is about your typical everyday fifteen year old girl of which the book refers to as named Alice (the names, dates, places and events that occur in the book have been changed.) The main character lives just like any other teenage girl. She has siblings she can’t seem to get along with, parents she doesn’t always agree with, self-esteem issues that she struggles with and worries about grasping the attention of her one “true love”, Roger. The entire book is entries into the diary which she considered one of her best friends. Within fourteen days after the diary starts, her dad is offered a job as the Dean of Political Science at a college in another town, they have to move. “Wonderful news, Diary! We’re moving” (3). She is excited. She goes through with dating other guys but all she can seem to think about is Roger. She meets a girl at school named Beth who is coincidentally a close neighbor and they become friends. When summer arrives, Beth goes away to a summer camp and Alice goes to spend summer back with her grandparents. While at her grandparents, her old friend, Jill, invited her to a party. Alice had dropped LSD and although she was very interested and curious, she doesn’t want to do it again. Ironically enough, she keeps experimenting with more drugs. Alice returns home, as does Beth. They’ve both changed. Alice meets a girl named Jill, who is also into drugs. After being friends for a while they decide to move away together, they both continue their drug use. “I don’t know what the hell hour or day or even year it is, or even what town” (97). It’s too much for her to handle so she moves back home because she misses her family, they forgive her. She meets a guy named Joel, who is a student at the university where her father works. They get to know each other and she realizes that this is the guy for her. The death of Alice’s grandmother brings the two closer together. Alice unexpectedly wakes up in a hospital bed and is told that someone put LSD in her food while she was babysitting, she ended up going crazy. She has to be registered into a mental hospital. While in there, she cannot wait to be released and reunite with Joel and her family. This book doesn’t sugar coat reality, I highly recommend it to anyone.