ARC Review: Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer

Title: Belzhar
Author: Meg Wolitzer
Publication: September 30th 2014 by Dutton Juvenile
Genre: YA Paranormal
Source: Provided by the kind publisher...

If life were fair, Jam Gallahue would still be  at home in New Jersey with her sweet British  boyfriend, Reeve Maxfield. She’d be watching  old comedy sketches with him. She’d be kissing  him in the library stacks.

She certainly wouldn’t be at The Wooden Barn, a therapeutic boarding school in rural Vermont, living with a weird roommate, and signed up for an exclusive, mysterious class called Special Topics in English.

But life isn’t fair, and Reeve Maxfield is dead.

Until a journal-writing assignment leads Jam to Belzhar, where the untainted past is restored, and Jam can feel Reeve’s arms around her once again. But there are hidden truths on Jam’s path to reclaim her loss.

From New York Times bestselling author Meg Wolitzer comes a breathtaking and surprising story about first love, deep sorrow, and the power of acceptance.

-- My Rating --

3/5 Oscars: Liked it

-- My Thoughts --

      I have been hearing so much about this novel these past couple of weeks. All sorts of reviews, mostly negative. So -as a rule- I was immediately intrigued but now, I am left feeling confused and cheated.
     Jam has been sent to The Wooden Barn for troubled and intelligent teens after her boyfriend Reeve dies. Everything changes when she receives her assignment in Special Topics in English class, and there she meets a group of misfits who are just as troubled as she is.
     First thing, the setting. I loved the setting and the plot it revolved around. It was the whole boarding school setting with the eerie background and the creepy stuff. I loved it. And the descriptions were vivid and lovely.Kudoos to Meg Wolitzer for her descriptive writing style. It was amazing and wholesome.
     The characters were not my favorite. I never got her motives and I never understood why she did what she did. And sometimes, I didn't trust anything she said. That's very hard to overcome in a novel and I guess I never did. But probably my favorite character was Griffin, the guy was such a mysterious but insanely sweet guy. I just loved him. I wanted to see more of him but unfortunately, that was not the case. He was kind of overlooked.
     The romance is mainly what the story revolves around as Jam has some flashbacks. I loved the idea of Belzhar and what it signified and I guess this book was very fast-paced because I read it in only a couple of hours. This book was going all good until the ending chapter and then BAM! It just decreased my rating by two stars. I knew I should expect something dramatic at the ending but THAT was just, NO!
     Even though I feel betrayed and cheated by the book, the ending was just WRONG! Otherwise, this is quite a good book,  even though I didn't like Jam, at all. You might feel different about this book though.