A well-pitched, beautifully written book, dark in content but not in feel.
A teenager battles drug addiction in Nash’s debut novel.
Eighteen-year-old Eli is at a high point in his life. He’s captain of the lacrosse team, the most popular kid in his school, and has a picture-perfect girlfriend by his side. Yet, even as the first game of the season moves toward triumph, all is not well: the thrill never lasts; the high is not real. Eli lives with his mom, stepdad, and half brother, but he’s long been unhappy at home, and he’s been turning to heroin as a way to cope. An overdose lands him in rehab—and then the real story begins. Over 28 days, Eli must confront his addiction and come to terms with the loss of his father. Although he’s unwilling, at first, to acknowledge that he even has a problem, he slowly, through interactions with an ex–drug-dealer counselor and the other patients at the clinic, begins to open up. He starts looking for the truth in his life, and as he finds himself strangely drawn to a girl who self-harms, he wonders if there might just be some sort of light at the end of the tunnel. The danger with a story such as Eli’s is that it can be overly grim or preachy. Nash avoids this and instead strikes just the right balance between realism and relatability. The plot is straightforward but not generic, and the characters are distinct without being clichéd or over-the-top. The dialogue never feels artificial, and Eli’s narration, written in the present-tense first-person, makes him a protagonist that teens will identify with. His take on life seems very much his own (not the author’s or the readers’ parents’), and events at the clinic play out with a momentum that reflects his increasing engagement with rehabilitation. Nash, in short, has pulled off a remarkable feat, taking a topic of great relevance and—without a hint of censure or denunciation—making it integral to a tale whose only demand is that it be read in one sitting.
A well-pitched, beautifully written book, dark in content but not in feel.Pub Date: April 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-946501-06-6
Page Count: -
Publisher: Tiny Fox Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose...
Sparks (The Longest Ride, 2013, etc.) serves up another heaping helping of sentimental Southern bodice-rippage.
Gone are the blondes of yore, but otherwise the Sparks-ian formula is the same: a decent fellow from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches falls in love with a decent girl from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches—and is still suffering the consequences. The guy is innately intelligent but too quick to throw a punch, the girl beautiful and scary smart. If you hold a fatalistic worldview, then you’ll know that a love between them can end only in tears. If you hold a Sparks-ian one, then true love will prevail, though not without a fight. Voilà: plug in the character names, and off the story goes. In this case, Colin Hancock is the misunderstood lad who’s decided to reform his hard-knuckle ways but just can’t keep himself from connecting fist to face from time to time. Maria Sanchez is the dedicated lawyer in harm’s way—and not just because her boss is a masher. Simple enough. All Colin has to do is punch the partner’s lights out: “The sexual harassment was bad enough, but Ken was a bully as well, and Colin knew from his own experience that people like that didn’t stop abusing their power unless someone made them. Or put the fear of God into them.” No? No, because bound up in Maria’s story, wrinkled with the doings of an equally comely sister, there’s a stalker and a closet full of skeletons. Add Colin’s back story, and there’s a perfect couple in need of constant therapy, as well as a menacing cop. Get Colin and Maria to smooching, and the plot thickens as the storylines entangle. Forget about love—can they survive the evil that awaits them out in the kudzu-choked woods?
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose corn syrup, stickily sweet but irresistible.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4555-2061-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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