Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Glass (Crank #2) by Ellen Hopkins

One little bit, my heart revs high, then settles into quick-step mode. How I've missed that race and pound. How I've missed the lack of control.
Crank. Glass. Ice. Crystal. Whatever you call it, it's all the same: a monster. Kristina thinks she can control it. Now with a baby to care for, she is determined to be the one deciding when and how much, the one calling the shots. But the monster is strong, and before she knows it, Kristina is back in its grip...and it won't let go.
--
Ellen Hopkins is the best of her kind, and the Crank series proves it again in Glass. Hopkins's beautifully written sequel to Crank left me crying for more. Kristina/Bree's continued downward spiral into the depths of addiction to sex and drugs takes emotional turns and her failing relationships turn more harmful yet. With a child, Hunter, fathered by a rapist, complicates things farther, and her family soon rejects her. I love, love love this series, and I cried at multiple times during this novel. The free-verse it's written in does add a lot to the story, but even without it, this novel was fantastic and realistic plot- and character-wise. Hopkins really knows what she's talking about. Maybe its my own personal emotional attachment to this series, since I have a friend who struggled with addiction to methamphetamine, but a lot of my friends think these books are great, too, so I don't think it's my own emotions that made this novel so great. The topic is rightly controversial and at times, plain-out nasty. I found Kristina's relationship with both Trey and his cousin, Brandon to be particularly gritty and raw, but the entire book was written flawlessly.
5 stars (I really need to do a review of a book I didn't love so much) and a recommendation to fans of the series and teen readers who want to be aware of the damages of drug-abuse.

1 comments:

Italia said...

Glass is the direct follow up to Crank, which starts with Kristina Snow after she's had her baby, kicked meth and nicotine and shortly before her eighteenth birthday. It follows her relapse in her struggle with the meth monster and goes farther than Crank imagined. Sharp and painful Glass is hard to read. For one Kristina seems to not even care that she'd making such horrible mistakes. Almost on autopilot in her quest to fill simple needs, reader with more than once want to reach into the lines and try to shake some sense into her.

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