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A review by april_does_feral_sometimes
Crank by Ellen Hopkins
5.0
Kristina Snow, the narrator of ‘Crank’, hasn’t seen her dad in eight years. She is almost sixteen when she leaves her mom Marie, stepdad Scott, and her two siblings Leigh and Jake in Las Vegas. She lands at the Albuquerque Airport in New Mexico for a three-week visit over the summer. Kristina’s memories are all golden about her father, so she has built up a deep resentment over her mom’s divorce. She doesn’t notice that her mom and stepdad and siblings are a normal middle-class family.
She is shocked when she sees her father. He smokes, swears, and isn’t as good looking as she remembers. He lives in a bad neighborhood. His small apartment has cockroaches. He doesn’t have an air conditioner. And he smokes cigarettes. He says he doesn’t believe in love. He works in a bowling alley, exchanging shoes. Later, she ends up snorting meth and smoking weed with him. But he isn’t the first person she has done this with.
She meets a young man on the stairs on her first day with her dad. He is beautiful! He introduces himself as Buddy, but his real name is Adam. She knows it is True Love. However, he has a girlfriend. There is some drama, of course. But. Sex! Drugs! Never before has this happened. By the end of her visit, they swear love forever, and to write each other. She wonders how they will be lovers, though, since they live in different states.
She DOES bring back to her suburban Las Vegas home a new secret friend with her: crank (meth). It is a friend which over the next few months changes her entire life. But it’s ok, right? She loves being Bree, her new persona. Bree is challenging, gregarious, sexy. Bree has new cool friends. Bree has multiple boyfriends. Bree skips classes because she partied all night with her friends and dealers.
She can quit anytime, right? Her savings are gone, but her mom will never notice her credit card is missing or the charges for awhile. Her grades will not be sent home for months, so her spotty attendance will not be noticed at home for awhile.
Life feels so good high!
“Life was good
before I
met
the monster.
After,
life
was great.
At
least
for a little while.”
‘Crank’ by Ellen Hopkins is book one in the Crank Trilogy series. It is fantastic (the writing) and horrible (the subject) at the same time. Emotion and drama is expressed very vividly by the free verse style and in the visual shaping of sentences and paragraphs into wedges, off-kilter words and slopes on the white spaces of the pages to reflect inner mental states. Surprisingly, nothing of the story is lost by the use of verses and arty visuals. The story felt real, like reading an actual teen girl’s diary. Of course, since the fictional characters are composites of real people, including some in the author’s family, the plot is a compressed one where everything bad that can happen, happens in a short time. It can feel like it is a soap opera to some more protected or middle-class readers. However, to me there was nothing wrong-footed or overdone at all. This stuff happens to many individuals for real. Kristina’s slide down into Bree’s life occurs every day.
I highly recommend this novel.
She is shocked when she sees her father. He smokes, swears, and isn’t as good looking as she remembers. He lives in a bad neighborhood. His small apartment has cockroaches. He doesn’t have an air conditioner. And he smokes cigarettes. He says he doesn’t believe in love. He works in a bowling alley, exchanging shoes. Later, she ends up snorting meth and smoking weed with him. But he isn’t the first person she has done this with.
She meets a young man on the stairs on her first day with her dad. He is beautiful! He introduces himself as Buddy, but his real name is Adam. She knows it is True Love. However, he has a girlfriend. There is some drama, of course. But. Sex! Drugs! Never before has this happened. By the end of her visit, they swear love forever, and to write each other. She wonders how they will be lovers, though, since they live in different states.
She DOES bring back to her suburban Las Vegas home a new secret friend with her: crank (meth). It is a friend which over the next few months changes her entire life. But it’s ok, right? She loves being Bree, her new persona. Bree is challenging, gregarious, sexy. Bree has new cool friends. Bree has multiple boyfriends. Bree skips classes because she partied all night with her friends and dealers.
She can quit anytime, right? Her savings are gone, but her mom will never notice her credit card is missing or the charges for awhile. Her grades will not be sent home for months, so her spotty attendance will not be noticed at home for awhile.
Life feels so good high!
“Life was good
before I
met
the monster.
After,
life
was great.
At
least
for a little while.”
‘Crank’ by Ellen Hopkins is book one in the Crank Trilogy series. It is fantastic (the writing) and horrible (the subject) at the same time. Emotion and drama is expressed very vividly by the free verse style and in the visual shaping of sentences and paragraphs into wedges, off-kilter words and slopes on the white spaces of the pages to reflect inner mental states. Surprisingly, nothing of the story is lost by the use of verses and arty visuals. The story felt real, like reading an actual teen girl’s diary. Of course, since the fictional characters are composites of real people, including some in the author’s family, the plot is a compressed one where everything bad that can happen, happens in a short time. It can feel like it is a soap opera to some more protected or middle-class readers. However, to me there was nothing wrong-footed or overdone at all. This stuff happens to many individuals for real. Kristina’s slide down into Bree’s life occurs every day.
I highly recommend this novel.