Boring at best. ( )

I purchased this book from Half Priced Books to read. All opinions are my own. 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Jay's Journal by Anonymous (Beatrice Sparks). A book from The Anonymous Diaries. Jay is a fifteen year old boy struggling to find his way through life. After several mistakes his parents send him to "a boys school" and Jay meets Peter and gets introduced to "white witchcraft." As Jay turns 16 and digs deeper into researching this "cult lifestyle" he struggles with what's right and what's wrong and ultimately decides there is only one way out. A sad story of a teens loss of girls, friends, and hope. Review also posted on Instagram @borenbooks, Library Thing, Go Read, Goodreads/StacieBoren, Amazon, Twitter @jason_stacie and my blog at readsbystacie.com ( )

I feel bad for him, son.
He got 99 problems and satan is one.

Poor kid. Just in the wrong spot at the wrong time.
He needs a hug too. ( )

Beatrice Sparks is well known for taking the words of teenagers and bulking them up with fictional fluff to make them sell a specific narrative. Drug addiction, homelessness, angst and suicidal tendencies, all of these are fair game within her edits.

When I was a kid though, I did not know any of this, and as with many kids, we read these stories with a sick guilty pleasure. There was even a little "training manual" feel to them as we picked apart things we knew vs those elements we did not.

Jay's Journal was no exception to this. In fact, growing up in Utah, Jay's Journal had a specific allure to the teenage crowd as it was purportedly written by a guy in our area during my parents generation. Debunked, it is shown that minimal amounts were factual and all the juicy details were fiction.

With that said, who cares! I tracked down the revision of this book that I read as a teen. Kid filled with angst slaughters cows and drinks their blood straight from the vein? Ritualistic satanist sex? Conjuring demons/demonic possessions? Man, when I was a gothic clad teen in a heavily religious area, this was Stephen King IRL and a must read!

Unfortunately, every pro has a con. For every kick ass page of occult awesomeness, there are 20 pages of whiny teenage crying and love sick drivel.

As a teen, this book was great, as an adult it was like a root canal.

If anyone has a lead on the book written by "Jay's" brother in real life, I would love to read it. Was apparently a short print run with no current ebook revisions. Hook me up! I hate that I cannot locate a copy if this.

A Place in the Sun: The Truth Behind Jay's Journal, by Scott Barrett



Reblurb:

Not needed. The only things I would add would be pure snark..

Regarding struggling with the same demons.. (Raul specifically) and my curiosity if he looks less like Freddy Mercury these days ;)



Publisher's summary from the edition I read:

"On a cold January night, Jay put a pistol to his head and pulled the trigger. He was sixteen"

Jay was a nice, bright high school kid who cared about good grades, good friends, and good times-- and as few hassles with his parents as possible. He thought someday he might be a doctor, a lawyer, maybe a writer. He thought he could handle anything. But he was wrong.

When school days began to twist into a haze of drugs and drinking... When his girlfriend's addiction led him to steal pills from his father's pharmacy.. When a charismatic friend lured him into a nightmare world of the occult, Jay couldn't handle it. Helplessly fascinated, he plunged into a world of Ouija boards and witchcraft, animal sacrifice and Satanism... into a black abyss from which there seemed no escape.

Only in the pages of his journal could Jay express the dark forces that led to his suicide. Now from the editor who brought the phenomenal Go Ask Alice to light, Here is Jay's Journal-- a haunting, heartbreaking story that may help other young people struggling with the same demons, and that will surely leave no reader unmoved. ( )

Could possibly prevent teens for becoming involved in drug and sex abuse and the occult. CAUTION: extreme horrific profanity and explicit scenes. ( )