Tag Archives: opioid epidemic

Review: You’d Be Home Now by Kathleen Glasgow

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You'd Be Home Now by Kathleen Glasgow

You’d Be Home Now
Kathleen Glasgow
Delacorte Press
Published September 28, 2021

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About You’d Be Home Now

For all of Emory’s life she’s been told who she is. In town she’s the rich one–the great-great-granddaughter of the mill’s founder. At school she’s hot Maddie Ward’s younger sister. And at home, she’s the good one, her stoner older brother Joey’s babysitter. Everything was turned on its head, though, when she and Joey were in the car accident that killed Candy MontClaire. The car accident that revealed just how bad Joey’s drug habit was.

Four months later, Emmy’s junior year is starting, Joey is home from rehab, and the entire town of Mill Haven is still reeling from the accident. Everyone’s telling Emmy who she is, but so much has changed, how can she be the same person? Or was she ever that person at all?

Mill Haven wants everyone to live one story, but Emmy’s beginning to see that people are more than they appear. Her brother, who might not be cured, the popular guy who lives next door, and most of all, many ghostie addicts who haunt the edges of the town. People spend so much time telling her who she is–it might be time to decide for herself.

Inspired by the American classic Our Town, You’d Be Home Now is Kathleen Glasgow’s glorious modern story of a town and the secret lives people live there. And the story of a girl, figuring out life in all its pain and beauty and struggle and joy.

My Review

This book broke my heart. It’s so raw, so full of emotion. It’s desperate and tender. I love the relationship between Emory and her brother, Joey. Watching her family navigate this incredibly difficult moment made me feel like I couldn’t look away. I needed to know what would happen all the way until the last page.

It definitely captured some of the feel of OUR TOWN. The opioid use gave the story a completely different spin, though. And, oh my gosh. Emory’s mother. I had to pause my reading a couple of times because her control issues were so off the chart. I felt like I could feel Emory’s anxiety and Joey’s frustration and apathy myself when their mother was in the room sometimes. Yikes.

As a reader, I loved this book so much. It challenged me as a writer, too. Like, it’s definitely one of those books that I finish reading and then struggle not to quietly go and delete every project I’ve been working on because I can’t see how I’ll ever write something as compelling as this. (No manuscripts were harmed in the making of this book review.)

If you love stories featuring family drama, or books that explore first love and addiction, or complicated grief, those are all great reasons to pick up YOU’D BE HOME NOW.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Emory is the daughter of a wealthy white family in a small town. Her brother is recovering from opioid addiction.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used somewhat frequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl. References to touching and masturbation. A girl allows a boy to take photos of her while she’s naked.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
Emory’s brother comes home with a black eye and says another boy at school hit him.

Drug Content
Emory drinks alcohol at a party. Other kids smoke pot. Emory’s brother uses heroin and oxycontin (happens off-scene).

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Review: Dreamland (YA Edition) by Sam Quinones

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Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic (YA Edition)
Sam Quinones
Bloomsbury YA
Published July 16, 2019

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Goodreads

About Dreamland (YA Edition)

As an adult book, Sam Quinones’s Dreamland took the world by storm, winning the NBCC Award for General Nonfiction and hitting at least a dozen Best Book of the Year lists. Now, adapted for the first time for a young adult audience, this compelling reporting explains the roots of the current opiate crisis. 

In 1929, in the blue-collar city of Portsmouth, Ohio, a company built a swimming pool the size of a football field; named Dreamland, it became the vital center of the community. Now, addiction has devastated Portsmouth, as it has hundreds of small rural towns and suburbs across America. How that happened is the riveting story of Dreamland. Quinones explains how the rise of the prescription drug OxyContin, a miraculous and extremely addictive painkiller pushed by pharmaceutical companies, paralleled the massive influx of black tar heroin–cheap, potent, and originating from one small county on Mexico’s west coast, independent of any drug cartel.

Introducing a memorable cast of characters–pharmaceutical pioneers, young Mexican entrepreneurs, narcotics investigators, survivors, teens, and parents–Dreamland is a revelatory account of the massive threat facing America and its heartland.

My Review

If you’re looking for a book that explains how the opiate epidemic started and why it became such a pervasive problem, DREAMLAND is the right book. The author explores the issue from all sides, from the actions of a pharmaceutical company to pill mill doctors to some stories of people who became addicted or saw opportunities to capitalize on the addictions of others.

As I read, each new chapter revealed more and more disturbing truths. So many failures at so many levels allowed this problem to take hold and explode across communities across the country.

DREAMLAND doesn’t link to this, but I recently saw a news report from a Washington Post reporter who was part of an effort to publish a database showing how many prescription pain pills were distributed to different counties in the US. I looked up my own county and was pretty much floored by the total number. I suppose I should have been less surprised since Quinones does point out in DREAMLAND that 9 of 10 of the top prescribing counties in the US during the peak of the pill mill problem were counties in Florida.

I definitely recommend DREAMLAND to anyone who wants a deeper understanding of how we got here and why the opioid epidemic happened in the first place.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Strong profanity used infrequently

Romance/Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
Quinones follows a church-based addiction recovery program.

Violent Content
None.

Drug Content
Obviously this book contains references to drug abuse. It doesn’t contain graphic scenes showing characters abusing drugs, but gives a lot of information about how drugs were trafficked. One person Quinones describes was raised by an alcoholic, abusive father.

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