Tag Archives: crystal meth

Review: Wrecked by Heather Henson

Blogger's Favorites, Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Romance, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , , , , ,
Wrecked by Heather Henson

Wrecked
Heather Henson
Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books
Published on March 22, 2022

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About Wrecked

For as long as Miri can remember it’s been her and her dad, Poe, in Paradise—what Poe calls their home, hidden away from prying eyes in rural Kentucky. It’s not like Miri doesn’t know what her dad does or why people call him “the Wizard.” It’s not like she doesn’t know why Cal, her one friend and Poe’s right-hand man, patrols the grounds with a machine gun. Nothing new, but lately Paradise has started to feel more like a prison.

Enter Fen. The new kid in town could prove to be exactly the distraction Miri needs…but nothing is ever simple. Poe doesn’t take kindly to strangers. Fen’s DEA agent father is a little too interested in Miri’s family. And Cal isn’t satisfied with being just friends with Miri anymore. But what’s past is prologue—it’s what will follow that will wreck everything.

Shining a klieg light on the opioid crisis coursing through this country, WRECKED will have readers on the edge of their seat right up until the explosive ending.

My Review

First, let me say that this book is an incredible, wild ride. I love Fen and Miri! Clay broke my heart. For a short book (272 pages) it packs a huge punch in emotions and action.

So I’m not generally the biggest insta-love fan, but I think the whole, “Fen and Miri have just met, but they share this instant connection” actually worked for me in this book. In part it worked because it felt like an emotional connection between outcasts and oddballs, not a connection based on their physical attraction for each other. It wasn’t even overtly romantic at first. That definitely hooked me.

The secrets Miri keeps are huge. Just being friends with Fen could blow her whole life apart. Fen is used to people’s eyes glazing over when he tries to explain his love for his soundscapes, so he’s kind of given up on anyone understanding him, ever, when he meets Miri.

The third POV character is Clay, a boy in love with Miri. A childhood friend of hers who has been brought into the family by Miri’s dad. I liked his character, too. He has such a tragic past. He’s fiercely loyal to Miri and her family. He needs to be recognized as valuable to someone.

All that comes together in a high-intensity story set just outside a meth lab. I’m a little confused because the cover copy talks about this story bringing attention to the opioid epidemic, but I didn’t think meth was an opiate? I thought it was a stimulant? So I don’t know if it’s been reclassified (a quick google search seems to indicate no?) or if that’s kind of a marketing thing. Connect the book to the opioid crisis because it’s higher profile right now than meth addiction? I don’t know.

Conclusion

All in all, I enjoyed the story and read it really quickly. I didn’t want to stop because it felt like all the dominoes were always about to fall. I think fans of books by Ellen Hopkins will like the gritty writing (though this isn’t written in verse) and the gripping characters.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Major characters are white.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used somewhat frequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl. At one point they both take tops off.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
More than once a boy is threatened at gunpoint. A boy walks into a burning building because his friends are inside.

Drug Content
Several characters abuse crystal meth and/or drink alcohol.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support this blog. I received a free copy of WRECKED in exchange for my honest review.

Review: Finding Hope by Colleen Nelson

Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , ,

Finding Hope
Colleen Nelson
Dundurn

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Sixteen year-old Hope is trapped in a small town as her family wrestles with her brother’s addiction to crystal meth. After her mom pushes her to apply for a prestigious boarding school over an hour away, she’s shocked to discover she’s been accepted. There’s only one problem: if she moves away, how will her brother, Eric, survive on the street without the money and food she regularly slips to him? When Eric learns Hope has gone away to school, he follows her to the city. Unfortunately, his inner demons only torment him harder as he draws nearer to the memories that pushed his former life completely off the rails. He turns to Hope for help, but she has her own battles to fight, and for the first time, she may not be able to save him from himself.

Though Finding Hope is described as being about Hope, I kind of felt like Eric stole the show. This sort of echoes the way Hope’s family operates, where Eric is the squeaky wheel, the one who requires a lot of intervention and causes a lot of tension, and Hope sort of goes quietly unnoticed. I felt a little disappointed that the novel kind of went the same way. She has her own crisis to manage, but even that sort of took a back seat to Eric’s unfolding drama.

One thing I really liked was the role her poetry played in the story. I liked that she crafted poems during intense situations and that she used them to communicate with her brother. I also loved the way her writing impulses escalated to her scrawling the lines on her own body. I felt that increased pressure and that sort of coming-unglued feeling right along with her in those moments.

I wished I’d gotten to see more of her relationship with Devon as it unfolded. I felt like we got snippets of her email exchanges, but not enough to make me feel like I understood or believed in the relationship.

The story resolves many of the big issues raised, some more easily than others. Again, Hope’s troubles sort of take a backseat to Eric’s. Things unwind pretty quickly, and true to its title, the tale leaves readers with the sense that the worst is over, and better days are ahead for Hope and her family.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used moderately throughout the book. Most of the profanity is in the sections from Eric’s point-of-view.

Romance/Sexual Content
Girls at Hope’s new school dare each other to walk through the hall naked or send photos of their breasts to boys from another school. A man encourages a boy to watch pornography. One character reveals memories of abuse. The memories are choppy, it’s not a play-by-play reveal of events, but there are some graphic, intense descriptions, including one describing coerced oral sex.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
Eric injures his hand during a robbery.

Drug Content
Eric is addicted to crystal meth. The addiction is clearly destroying his life and relationships with his family. He’s living on the street, depending on handouts from guilt-ridden or sympathetic family members and strangers.

Note: I received a free copy of this book through Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

Save

Review: Crank by Ellen Hopkins

Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Poetry, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , ,

Crank
Ellen Hopkins
Margaret K. McElderry Books
Published October 1, 2004

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About Crank

In CRANK, Ellen Hopkins chronicles the turbulent and often disturbing relationship between Kristina, a character based on her own daughter, and the “monster,” the highly addictive drug crystal meth, or “crank.” Kristina is introduced to the drug while visiting her largely absent and ne’er-do-well father. While under the influence of the monster, Kristina discovers her sexy alter-ego, Bree: “there is no perfect daughter, / no gifted high school junior, / no Kristina Georgia Snow. / There is only Bree.” Bree will do all the things good girl Kristina won’t, including attracting the attention of dangerous boys who can provide her with a steady flow of crank.

My Review

CRANK is the story of Kristina Snow and the summer that changes her life, when she goes to visit her father and meets the “monster”, Crystal Meth. Ellen Hopkins captures the turmoil and grip of addiction in a raw, authentic manner as she tells the story of a girl caught in the same kind of addiction her own daughter has battled.

The entire story is told in verse. Each poem captures the story in vivid detail. They flow from scene to scene very smoothly, capturing the raw emotion of the heroine– her desperation, heartache– and the downward spiral of her addiction to Meth. What a really powerful read.

This is the first novel in verse that I’ve ever read. I think the thing that stands out to me is how starkly each scene is portrayed, even though it’s told in shorter lines of poetry rather than paragraphs of prose. It’s pretty amazing to me how Ellen Hopkins paints such vivid pictures with her words and draws us into the stories of people we might overlook or judge in real life.

Update 12/5/2022: If you liked WRECKED by Heather Henson, add CRANK to your reading list.

Content Notes

Content warning for drug use and rape.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme word choice, moderate frequency.

Sexual Content
Kristina has some sexual experiences in the story. In one scene, her boyfriend rapes her. Both scenes are short and don’t really give a whole “play by play” account, but leave the reader with no doubt of what has occurred.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violence
A boyfriend rapes Kristina. She licks blood from her arm in one scene.

Drug Content
Kristina experiments with meth and other drugs and wrestles with addiction throughout the story. Several scenes depict her using drugs.

Save

Save

Save