Jay's Journal: A Book Review

A letter from a heartbroken mother reaches the desk of Psychiatrist, Beatrice Sparks. The letter explains to Sparks how her last book, Go Ask Alice really hit home for her, and goes on to say that she has some material written by her recently deceased son, Jay, that might be useful to Sparks in another book to make teens aware of the horrible effects of drug abuse. Sparks’ last book was written from the perspective of an unnamed 15 year old girl, whose drug addiction ultimately leads to the end of her life. Written in the format of the girl’s diary, this book was highly praised, and really did help bring awareness to recreational drug usage in the 1970s. The mother of “Jay” was in a heartbroken frenzy when she wrote to Sparks, due to losing her son to suicide. Sparks decides to create another book similar to Go Ask Alice, and goes on to publish yet another journal of a troubled teen.

I, for one, immensely enjoyed Go Ask Alice, and looked forward to reading Jay’s Journal. This book was a massive let-down, to say the least.

Part of what made Go Ask Alice so riveting was the relatability to the main character, and the emotional ties the book creates by making it seem so real and plausible (the book is cited as a work of fiction, due to being based off of one of Sparks’ clients’ journals, but it was edited into more of a flowing story format). Jay’s Journal seems so unbelievably fake, it was almost like I was reading Harry Potter. The story has little to nothing to do with teenage drug abuse, which is the campaign Sparks set out to bring awareness to with her debut novel. Jay’s Journal is mostly full of delirious ramblings of a clearly psychotic and neurotic teenage boy whose parents should have gotten him help much earlier on. In the last page of the book, Sparks shows a last note written by Jay’s mother, in which she says to not let him “die in vain.” This to me sounds like exploitation of a child’s troubles to gain media favor.

The majority of the journal entries in this book are talking about Jay’s insatiable sex drive and interest in the Occult. He discusses his ability to make things float, communicate with others through messages that aren’t verbalized, but sent through “ESP,” or telepathy. This aspect of the story makes it very unbelievable to a reader, and quite honestly makes it into more of a joke. This 15-year old boy also talks about a girl whom he went through a ritual with, to essentially be married. During this ritual he and his group slaughter a kitten in a graveyard. Upon reading this, I for one, want to know where his parents were. After all, in his mother’s last note, she even mentions knowing about this ritual. To any reasonable person, this would be a giant red flag to go get your child the help they need.

Toward the end of the book with Jay’s suicide approaching, he talks about selling his soul with his friends, and how his two best friends die in the two weeks before Jay takes his own life. His mother mentions knowing how hard this was for him, yet Jay, in his entries, talks about how his parents don’t communicate with him and are hardly ever home.

If your child’s two lifelong best friends both die a short time apart from each other, you would think tabs would be kept on your child to ensure their safety.

I believe Jay’s Journal is not only heavily bent into a work of fiction, but the parts that were directly written by him were byproducts of parental neglect and lack of concern. Most readers know that “Black Magic” doesn’t just work in the ways described in the book, ie. being able to make coins float using the power of your mind, which again, makes this book a total joke and an insensitive one, at that.

Sparks’ first book was clearly based off of the troubles of a young teenager, and told in a way that actually brings awareness to the problem. However, in Jay’s Journal, it’s almost as if Sparks totally gave into the fiction aspect of writing. Obviously, the book is cited as such, but seeing as a mother reached out and provided information to help further Sparks’ efforts to bring about change, it’s appalling that such an unrealistic and total disappointment of a story would ever be published. Readers expected a story like Go Ask Alice, and were met with something that seemed to laugh in the face of it. Readers who found comfort in Go Ask Alice can easily feel cheated by this follow-up publication.

The target audience for this book was young adults, specifically ones that have struggled with similar problems before. However, Jay’s Journal seems to make a mockery of the trust that those struggling readers put in Sparks, due to her first story.

As far as character development goes, in this story, there really was none. It starts out as a downer, and continues being such. The character speaks the same way and has the same attitudes and mannerisms throughout the whole book, quite honestly pointing to family issues and neuroticism. The only thing that kept this book going was the completely appalling situations, such as the ritual discussed above, keeping the reader unable to look away, like a bad car crash. In fact, in contrast with her first book, the main characters both commit suicide, but in Go Ask Alice, you are lead to believe it is due to the main characters’ drug abuse. In Jay’s Journal, you are lead to believe that he was possessed by a demon, and didn’t actually want to die, leading to the conclusion that there was only ever going to be one uncontrollable ending to the story. Not to mention the sheer tackiness of implying that this child had no emotional torment causing him to take his own life, but that it was a total other entity, controlling him like a puppet. In reality, he was a child. A child in need of help, who was denied that by not only his parents, but Beatrice Sparks herself.

Editor's Note: I almost abandoned this book several times, but it's such a quick read I felt determined to finish it.

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