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It Happened to Nancy

It Happened to Nancy

List Price: $5.99
Your Price: $5.39
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: propaganda, plain and simple
Review: This "diary" is just as bad (and just as entertaining) as both Go Ask Alice and Jay's Journal, two other books written by that intrepid team of Sparks and Jennings. I just love these books--they're so trashy, you can't help but eat them up. Besides presenting AIDS in a highly unrealistic fashion, the writing appears to have been crafted by trolls. What's next--teenaged hookers straight from the convent? I fervently hope so, because junk like this really makes my day. Treat young adults with some small modicum of intelligence, please. Dumbing down writing in this way doesn't help anyone, least of all those brilliant teens who can't get enough of their Nintendo 64.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This book will always have a lifetime impact on me.
Review: I use to think that only people taking drugs or having unprotected sex got AIDS not any nice young girl from a good background. But I guess I was wrong. It shows the reality of a young girl with AIDS. Her life, friends, family, and the horrors of having AIDS. AIDS is still out their today taking more young lifes. I'm so glad I've read this book. I will carry it with me forever. It was the first book I read straight through. If you want to know more about AIDS this is the best book to read.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A sad yet delightful story of a young girl with AIDS
Review: This book is about a young teenager named Nancy who contacted AIDS after she was raped by someone she knew. It is written in first person as seen from the narrator's diary. A witty, delightful, but unfortunatly sad story about her life before AIDS, during and even a brief summary of her afterdeath. As you read this book you will feel as though you knew this author, she was someone who will make you smile and see the bright things in life. She had a cherry outlook on life and was kind enough to share it with strangers. I recommend this book for anyone. Whether you are sexually active or not, whether you have AIDS or not. This book is a great book for learning and it is quite an enjoyable one too. You will laugh, cry, become upset...it's that realistic. Buy the book today, believe me you will read this book over and over again. You will not regret it this purchase.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A teen diary of living with AIDS after a "date rape."
Review: You will be drawn into this story immediately. It is told in the form of a teen's diary. Nancy is a very real character who captures your feelings but not in a "feel sorry for me" way. My heart went out to her as she tells her story of date rape and the invasion of AIDS into her body. A must for teenagers.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: It Happened to Nancy
Review: It Happened to Nancy is one of the best books of all time. Heart breaking, compelling, it is a must read. A 14 year old girl gets date raped, and later finds she has HIV. Reading this book, it is hard to remember that it was a true story, and is happening right now. A definate must have.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Naive Nancy
Review: This diary edited by Beatrice Sparks was a tad unnerving. Whereas I better understood Alice's naivete in the drug world due to it being the late 60s/early 70s, Nancy's naivete in the modern dating world was a little more difficult for me to grasp.

Still, that doesn't make Nancy's situation any less heartbreaking. At fourteen, she falls in love with an 18 year-old named Colin. God knows I wasn't nearly as naive at 14 - and I'm not now, either. But for a girl looking for love in all the wrong places, she'll take it where she can find it. Besides, Colin's facade is believable and he is incredibly good looking, gentle, and seemingly loves her, despite a very short period of time spent together. However, things turn deadly when he date rapes her and leaves her with the HIV virus. It's basically impossible for police to track him down - Colin was not his real name, as Nancy soon finds out after her ordeal.

Now infected, Nancy must incessantly worry if she will accidentally infect peers and the ones she loves. She asks many questions in her diary that she herself does not answer, which is okay. Editor and doctor Beatrice Sparks answers all of her questions and more in a section of the end of the diary titled, Questions Nancy Wanted Answered About Rape and AIDS.

Nancy's downward spiral from a happy high schooler to a girl on the brink of death did little to shock me. Naturally, since her immune system grows weaker and weaker, that can be expected. But the support of friends and family, plus a normal boyfriend her own age, ease the pain and knowing that it will be her time to go sooner than originally thought. Despite the typical flaws found in many journals, this one still ought to be read by any girl aged 13 and up. Maybe, just maybe, it will change their perspectives about certain issues. It worries me that some of my friends date much older guys.

Take this conversation with one of my friends: "I think it's so gross how girls our age will go out with older guys. When I was in the eighth grade, my friends bragged about going out with 20 year-olds." "Well, I had something going on with a 26 year-old," my friend replied, sounding ashamed. I didn't judge her - I was embarassed my comment would make her think I thought badly of her. In reality, nothing like that would change how I felt about our friendship - it made me worry, that's all. I was concerned about another friend who lied to me about a guy she'd slept with. It happened when she was 14, she said, and he was 20 - actually, 23. "I thought you'd freak," she'd said. 20 or 23, I "freaked" both ways.

The dating world is a scary thing today, which is basically all I can say. My friends have proved this to me and so has this diary.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Moving book in spite of possibly being fradulent
Review: I read this book twice in a row at fourteen and cried at the end both times, after having earlier scoffed at the book because of how stupid and naïve Nancy acted. It's really upsetting to find it may be largely or entirely a fraud, that this sweet courageous young person may have been made up or had her life made into something that was largely the creation of Dr. Sparks. A lot of girls are like Nancy and don't see anything fishy about an older man wanting to date them or letting an older boyfriend spend the night when their parents are away. During the stampede (or whatever the chaos was) at the Garth Brooks concert she attends with her friends, Nancy has an asthma attack and finds herself being taken care of by a strange older boy named Collin. She never tells him to get away from her because she doesn't know him, or tell him he's too old for her at her age. (Four years of age difference in a relationship isn't that big of a deal, but if you're 14 and 18, it's not the same as, say, an 18 year old and a 22 year old.) She never even tells her mother about this relationship, or any of her friends. It turns out his real name is Gary and that he's 32 years old.

In hindsight some of it does seem too fishy to be true. How was Nancy's doctor able to give her an HIV test without her knowledge or permission, why does her disease get so serious so fast (unless Collin had a full-blown case when he gave it to her, or because of her strained immune system due to her serious asthma), why doesn't she go down to the Catholic rape crisis centre she called the morning after her attack, after telling the sympathetic nun on the phone she'd come over, why doesn't her mother take her to get tested for AIDS, STDs, or pregnancy as soon as she tells her about the rape? She takes her out of town on a beach vacation instead? And it's suspicious how all of Sparks's young diarists have the same exact moral preachiness, similar writing styles, never say anything against their parents (or if they do they quickly take it back), never get involved in these problems by their own accord but instead are pulled in by friends who drug them, rape them, or talk them into Satanic beliefs. Nancy may be a sweet religious old-fashioned Southern girl, but surely she couldn't have been that naïve. I was a few years younger than Nancy at the time these events are going on in the early Nineties, and well remember what the climate was like at that time, people deathly afraid of getting AIDS from toilet seats or mosquito bites, people desperate for more funding for research because so many people were dying and getting sick. None of that was felt in her small South Carolina town?

It's a moving book with a powerful and important message, but I no longer view it the same way I did when I first read it and thought it was a 100% true story.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Sparks just won't quit
Review: For me to give ANYTHING Sparks wrote 4 stars is a blessing. But I think 'Nancy' was actually a real girl. I also believe Sparks added a few entries all her own because for a period of the book, she sounded like 'Alice', 'Annie', and 'Kim'. She also claims to be Catholic like 'Alice', 'Annie', and 'Kim', but I think Sparks just threw that in to make kids think twice about suicide' (No, Catholics don't do that. -Nancy) Anyway before I didn't really give AIDS a second thought. But not like that 'it won't happen to me' attitude to be honest I just didn't care. But after learning about the virus (Sparks actually made a Q&A that actually answers questions! Gold Star for her) and hearing about 'Nancy's struggles I have a newfound respect for HIV/AIDS paitents. Oh, and one last thing, I think it's incredabily surreal she died 2 days after her last entry. I wasn't born yesterday. Good read and if you've read any of Sparks' other work you'll know what I'm talking about with the 'it sounds like she wrote it' parts.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Kinda Dull {SPOILERS}
Review: Its kind've dull, I felt sorry for her but it just got real boring and I knew she was going to die.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Definitly not a good book
Review: It seemed interesting, but its actually pretty boring. Its not well written, I definitly dont reccomend it. Go ask alice was a bit better..but didnt like that one much either. Plus i doubt anyone really writes like that in a diary. there must have been many touch ups from the author..


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