Katie Everson

CW: Drug use

The inner voice of teen worry and self doubt is captured really well in this book. I remember hearing almost exactly the same kinds of self-criticisms tumbling through my brain. If I’m honest, they still do the rounds in my head from time to time in social situations. This book is all about Carla losing herself to better fit in with the ‘popular’ group. This is a pretty common high school story line and this book doesn’t particularly stand out above the others. There is a lot of drug use but it isn’t a gritty foray into the world of drug addiction. It’s more of a dainty dabble into a teen drug users life. It is an important issue though, and as I mentioned earlier the inner monologue is quite authentic. It showed how easily you can get swept into this world with a few harmless ‘tries’. The only alarming part for me was when someone commented that Carla had lost weight. She was really pleased they had noticed and credited ‘stress and drug use’ as being slimming! I should have written down the exact quote but it was an audiobook and the pen and paper were over there *points to kitchen table*. Overall, the book is okay, although I did want to shake some sense into Carla a few times, but I hear that is frowned upon.… (meer)