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A review by allisonschoneschmetterling
Bewilderness by Karen Tucker
1.0
I thought this would be similar to Ellen Hopkins in her artful truth of drug addiction and how it destroys friendships and families- but this was so heavy handed and forced. The dialogue is cringe (like the author researched everything there is to know about street drugs and shoved all of it into every scene - mixed with an adult writing as a teenager. Who says “what the shit” ???) I was hopeful for a story about two young women and their friendship through hard times but this just reads like drug/trauma porn.
The toxic friendship between two drug users rings true and the drug abuse in the food industry is so real. But I didn’t appreciate how Irene is preaching to the reader about safe drug habits and how she got clean and she feels so sorry for those who don’t get clean etc etc etc… maybe it’s supposed to be meta (like when the Reddit thread tells her to take accountability for her role in Luce’s addiction) and her preachy nonsense is supposed to be ironic because she was basically the villain of this story… idk. I didn’t like a single character in the book so it made it hard to care about their fates. I wish the ending was as emotional for me as it was intended but I just… didn’t care.
All in all it makes me wonder who books like this are for. Do these books do anything good for people curious about drugs, or for people who have struggled with addiction? Is this just glorification of drug use? It basically reads as a how-to-guide… not cool.
The toxic friendship between two drug users rings true and the drug abuse in the food industry is so real. But I didn’t appreciate how Irene is preaching to the reader about safe drug habits and how she got clean and she feels so sorry for those who don’t get clean etc etc etc… maybe it’s supposed to be meta (like when the Reddit thread tells her to take accountability for her role in Luce’s addiction) and her preachy nonsense is supposed to be ironic because she was basically the villain of this story… idk. I didn’t like a single character in the book so it made it hard to care about their fates. I wish the ending was as emotional for me as it was intended but I just… didn’t care.
All in all it makes me wonder who books like this are for. Do these books do anything good for people curious about drugs, or for people who have struggled with addiction? Is this just glorification of drug use? It basically reads as a how-to-guide… not cool.