Belzhar – Alison Doherty

Hello and happy Monday! I’m about to board a bus away from my family in Annapolis and an absolutely lovely spring break (still can’t believe I actually get one of those now!) back to New York. Just so I’ll be able to torture myself the whole bus ride about choosing between three AMAZING novels, I picked three of my favorite YA books published last year: I’ll Give You the Sun, by Jandy Nelson, Belzhar, by Meg Wolitzer, and We Were Liars, by E. Lockhart. Ooof this is going to be a hard one for me, but I can’t wait to read which book you’d read (your favorite), rewrite (second favorite or one you want to change something about), and burn (least favorite). Continue reading “Burn, Read, Rewrite: I’ll Give You the Sun, Belzhar, & We Were Liars” →

I expected to like Belzhar, by Meg Wolitzer for a lot of reasons. I fell in love with Meg Wolitzer’s teenage characters in The Interestings this summer. Her grasp on teenage voice and teenage priorities made me wish for her to write something YA (since I got my wish maybe I should have asked for a million dollars instead). I also was super pumped about the connection to Sylvia Plath. Furthermore the idea of a boarding school specifically for “highly intelligent, emotionally fragile teenagers” tickled me. Don’t you wish you went to that school? I do…

Or at least I did, until I read the book and realized that different types of heartbreaking trauma are what got each of the characters sent to The Wooden Barn (and eventually into Belzhar). Anyway, I expected to like this book and I did. Here is why. Continue reading “Belzhar, by Meg Wolitzer” →