Tom is a teen that lives in a small town. He works hard at school so that one day he can go to an out of state college. Tom thinks its unfair that he has to work at his dad’s grocery store –for free. When he starts to take part in a therapy group for teens and they start discussing drugs, it opens Tom’s eyes to the drug problem in his community. Meth has started to take over; theft at the grocery store reaches epic proportions and even people he knows start to become zombie’s from it. This is the story of how one community struggles against a plague of addiction.
I think drug use and its expanding effects are an important topic. I really wanted to like this book, having known a meth addict -and seeing how it effected his life. But this book was sort of bleak, boring, and had an extremely dated feeling. I am not sure what I was supposed to take away from this book, but I think there might be some murky lessons hidden somewhere. I was rather irritated reading some of the solutions/coping mechanisms the characters and the community came up with. For example: if your store carry’s items that are continually stolen for meth –keep selling them, and allowing theft without prosecution, until eventually you get an employee shot in the process. The bottom line is that teen readers would be bored to tears, especially with the main character, and I am not sure they come out of reading this any different than they were before.
OPTIONAL Reviewer: Stephanie MLS graduate.
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