Rating: 
Summary: My favorite as a teen, now re-read as an adult
Review: I always loved this book when I was a teenager - I must have read it at least 4-5 times (actually, I'm an avid reader, so that isn't really that unusual). However, I have just re-read the book at 30, after 5 years of treatment for my own mental disorders, and have seen so much in the book that I never saw before. Perhaps this book appealed to me so much as an unkowingly sick teen because I could relate to Deborah Blau, although her disorder is of an entirely different type and scale from mine. I must say that this book should be required reading for anyone dealing with a loved-one's journey towards mental health. One thing people without these problems can't understand is that it is easier to stay sick - that getting healthy is hard work, scary, and LONG! And along the way, the symptoms may get worse, while you're actually getting better. This book is the first time I've seen someone try to explain this phenomenom - that the mentally ill cling to their symptoms as to a life-line, using them as protection while they heal, until the reach the point where those symptoms are no longer needed. After re-reading this book, I understand my own treatment so much better, and will recommend it to my loved-ones who have to deal with my treatment - maybe they can get a glimmer of understanding. It is rare in this world for any "healthy" person to truly understand mental illness
Rating:
Summary: A young girl's journey to health
Review: I read and loved this book as an adolescent. I recently saw it at the library and decided to take it out and read it again. I just finished re-reading it and found it as powerful as I remembered, possibly even more so. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden presents a complete picture of mental illness from the patient's point of view, without the stigma of wrongness that is frequently associated with it. The picture painted is a very real one, from Deborah's relief when the doctors confirm what she's known all along, that something is not right, to the way her family deals with the fact of her illness. Greenberg/Green evokes very strong emotions with her writing. You feel Deborah's fear that her secret world of Yr will punish her for revealing its existence to her doctor, and you share in her triumph when she begins to make her way back to the world. I put down this book with a little more understanding of how it must feel to be mentally ill. I would recommend it to anyone, teen or adult.
Rating: 
Summary: Thoroughly enjoyed
Review: Young adult reading about a mentally ill 16-year-old girl who endures 3 years in a mental hospital. The story is told mostly from Deborah Blau's, the 16-year-old girl, point of view. Deborah's mental illness established early in her life due to pent up rage, frustration, and the pain of not being accepted in life, among other things. Because of this rejection by the world, she created in her mind Yr, a fantasy land where she could escape the harsh realities of life, but Yr slowly turned into a place none-too-nice that held her captive in her mind. I loved this book for the simple fact that we're allowed to see things from Deborah's point of view. Few books do that. Usually, we're presented with a view from someone who's sane, thus sealing the prejudices and pity associated with the mentally ill. People tend to forget that the patients are still human, preferring to ostracize them because of their state-of-mind. This story presents the patients at people, and they are surprisingly astute and introspective despite their illness, and they are aware of what people who don't have an illness thinks of them. Deborah's story is a fascinating one. She works with a gifted psychiatrist to overcome Yr and its gods, which hurts her when she tries to tell the secrets of their world. We follow her sickness, her stages of recovery, and her eventual reintroduction to the world. It was nice to read a book that wasn't a horror that presented a view of mental illness. My lack to rate it higher comes from the fact that parts of the book were lacking in my opinion, but that doesn't void out the fact that book was a good read.
Rating:
Summary: Schizophrenia in richly woven detail-Adults read this too!
Review: One thing I've noticed is that most people who've read this book, read it first as an adolescent. If you didn't-read it now! This book is fascinating and extremely well written. Adullts will probably have the perspective to enjoy it even more than adolescents do. I first read this book when I was 11,and I didn't quite understand it all, but it caught me up, and I reread it many times over the years, each reading feeling more swept away by by Deborah's story. Now I'm 43 years old, an M.D., and I still love this book. The story of Deborah, a 16 y.o. schizophrenic young jewish girl, is told with amazing insight into the delusions and hallucinations of this type of mental illness. At the same time the "unreality" Deborah experiences is described so creatively, and evocatively, and is so rich and textured, that it is very easy to find yourself falling into "her" vision of the world. This is especially true when her rich fantasies are contrasted with the cold, impersonal and randomly cruel life of the hospital(unfortunately I believe this is a very accurate description of even what was a "good" pyschiatric hospital in the 1950's).
Deborah's progress closer to "sanity" contains moments of clarity and connection so beautifully described, they can still bring me close to tears. If I could recommend only one book in the whole of Amazon.com: this would be the one!
Rating:
Summary: Promises to be a good book
Review: I read this book before in high school, before having any real knowledge of mental illness and found it terribly confusing. Reading it now as a psychology major in college was a totally different experience. This fictional story tells of Deborah, a young woman committed to a mental hospital in the 1950's. This was written before doctors knew of chemical imbalances, so Deb's schizophrenia is attributed to a traumatic childhood surgery and an over-bearing grandfather. It's fascinating to explore her secret world of Yr and the gods that inhabit it. Also interesting to see how earlier psychologists might have treated patients. Even though this book is outdated it is still a very good book on mental illness.
Rating: 
Summary: False information
Review: Warning! if you are reading this book because you want to know more about schizophrenia, look somewhere else! the girl in this book should not have been classified as a schizophrenic. it is a good read but confuses the symptoms of the diagnosis. if you want to read a book about an actual schizophrenic try "is there no place on earth for me" by susan sheehan, or if you need info on the illness "Surviving Schizophrenia" by e fuller torrey is very helpful.
Rating:
Summary: Recommend!
Review: I've reread this book a number of times over the past 12 years, and what is startling is the way that I am emotionally effected by it each time. I don't think that you have to have a mental illness, or even be into science fiction (as one reviewer put it) to get a lot out of it. It is a little dated, as it was written before people knew that schizophrenia was caused by a chemical imbalance and had effective drug treatments for it. However, that does not detract from the emotional rawness of the story, nor from the way it portrays the effects of a mental illness both on the sufferer and their family, friends and caregivers. The prose manages to effectively convey the myriad of voices of all of the characters. Finally, it isn't trite, the ending doesn't make it seem like suddenly Deborah is cured. No, it aknowledges that this is a battle that she is going to have to fight her entire life.
Rating:
Summary: I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
Review: This book was absolutely phenomenal. Many books have great stories. Many books are well written. But Joanne Greenberg has written a wonderful story in a beautiful, poetic, thought-provoking way that not many can. The story leaves you hopeful, though not because the world is made out to be perfect, but because it is made to seem so real.
Rating:
Summary: I Never Promised You A Rose Garden
Review: I never promised you a rose garden is about a mentaly deranged teenage girl living in an alternate reality. I would catagorize this as an emotional book, one which makes the reader think. This is one of those books that you would read over again and wait for a sequal to come out. I would recomend this book to mainly teenagers.
Rating:
Summary: madness
Review: being crazy myself it makes give you some hope that eventually everything will be ok.
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