A review by alisonjfields
Marlena by Julie Buntin

3.0

This is actually a pretty fantastic, bad-dreamy, grit under the skin, non-YA novel about teenagers that is almost completely ruined by weird moralizing, a clunky modern day frame and a real rogue's gallery of addiction memoir cliches. Better novels than this one have been ruined by an unnecessary framing device and an author unwilling to let go without telling you every single thing that will ever happen to every single character in the future. All that said, the good parts are just good enough that I might recommend it to people. But t could have been a great one, and that's a real bummer.