A review by teagan821
Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones

4.0

One of the most harrowing and excruciating stories about modern America, which is incidentally, about the opioid crisis that's ravaged the country between the mid 90's to today. The alternating plot lines were an ingenious way to tell the story almost like a novel that brought the reader along for the ride and built suspense. It's truly unfathomable to think of the realities it presented - a town with an actual heroin economy, entire football teams being given pills by doctors and coaches resulting in deaths, Mexican traffickers looking like any car on the street and nonviolent. My small reservations were that Quinones could've used the term "delivered... like pizzas" probably 30 less times and gotten his point across. The Afterword also contained takeaways I thought were downright odd and had an air of snotty boomerism, saying we all just need to go outside as kids more. Those things aside, I absolutely couldn't put this book down and it was a gem of journalism and storytelling.