I was appalled when I found out that all of the books written by anonymous teenagers and edited by Beatrice Sparks were actually works of fiction. I started with Go Ask Alice and read a few more after that. It just irks me when an author says a book is non-fiction when in actuality it is fiction. ( )

These diaries are phenomenal. The stories they tell are incredibly powerful. It's very hard to believe they were written by actual teenagers. ( )

This book claims to be non-fiction -- the diary of a teen-aged rape victim who dies of AIDS. I don't buy the premise. The writings of a supposedly 15 year-old sound like they were written by a much younger child, or like an adult imagining the tragedy of a young person dying. Nancy is either ga-ga about a group outing to a movie or oh, so thankful for her wonderful parents. Don't know many teenagers like that. If I judge the book as fiction, it would also fail as there is no character development. Perhaps when the AIDS epidemic first hit, this book would have been more relevant -- there was a lot of fear, little knowledge, and almost no effective treatment. At a minimum, this book doesn't stand the test of time. ( )

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It's hard to review something which is a "real" diary and therefore not to be held to the standard of usual fiction. The quotation marks are there because the reality of Beatrice Sparks edited diaries is often questioned. They all tend to have a similar feel and end on very convenient notes.

Whatever the case is I'll only talk about it's educational and entertainment value. The portion at the back actual contains some fairly useful information on HIV/AIDS and it's effects. The actual book does delve into illness but because "Nancy" is a special case with a low immune system things happen at a much faster and more devastating rate than they usually do.

It wasn't as exciting as some of the other diaries in the same line. Nancy's life is fairly normal (other than AIDS) so not much of consequence happens when she isn't with the doctor or suffering from her disease. It did awaken the hypochondriac within me though, and I think I enjoyed it a little less for that. ( )

i think that the book was sad at the middle and the begining at lease she had the courge to put into a book for the public to read about. i think its sad to because she treated like family and raped her and left her with aid and HIV and she also had accped a ride home