Joni Reads
Written on Apr 18, 2021
Trigger Warnings- Alcoholism, Drug use, Depression, Divorce, Sexual Assault
This book wasn't what I was expecting. For some reason I went in thinking this was a thriller and it turned out to be more heavy hitting YA contemporary instead. That's not to say I didn't like it because I actually did enjoy this book.
Told in multiple POVs we are trying to find out what happened to the main character Vivienne after she overdosed at a party and is now in the hospital in a coma. Sometimes told in Viv's POV in the days leading up to the party, sometimes in the POV of her friends as they struggle in the aftermath to find out exactly what happened, and a few police interviews spread throughout as they investigate the overdose and try to pinpoint where Viv got the drugs this book was told in a way that kept me captivated throughout.
I really felt for Viv as a teenager struggling to stay afloat as she is more and more overwhelmed with her life. Her parent's marriage has fallen apart, her father is marrying the mistress, her mother is suffering from severe depression in the aftermath of the divorce. Add to that the pressure she feels to apply for scholarships, be the perfect girlfriend, volunteer, beef up her resume, and try to be a normal fun loving teenager on top of all of that. To cope, Viv turns to alcohol but she hides it from everyone except a cab driver named Stu who gives her a safe place to drink and pass out so she isn't in anymore danger than the situation already warrants.
I know how crazy that sounds. It's hard to explain Viv's life because it is so out of control that I felt stressed just reading about it. As a 32 year old mother of a 13 year old I wanted so badly to shake her and tell her to get help but I also realized that she had no one to turn to that really could help.
Viv's friend Davida is another POV we get to read from and she is the one who refuses to believe that Viv took drugs on purpose. She goes to the police with her suspicions and then begins to ask around to their friends at the Specialized Patient program at the local hospital. The SP program is where Davida and Viv become friends and it was one of my favorite aspects of this book.
Basically the hospital has this program where people come in and are assigned characters and medical conditions that they have to roleplay for the med students so they can get real world practice in med school. I think it sounds so interesting and reading about the makeup artist and the scripts and how much work and detail went in to the program was so interesting me.
The end of the book took such a dark turn and I truly didn't see it coming.
I'm giving this 4.5 stars because there were a few things that did feel off to me. I feel like the author tried to give Viv all these things to stress over but then never showed her actually working on any of them. For example- we constantly hear about this podcast that Viv is working on but never read anything about her actually doing anything with it. It was mentioned enough to bother me because she was saying that the podcast was one of the sources of stress in Viv's life yet the work for it was never done.
Overall this was a great YA novel about tough topics with a bit of mystery and suspense thrown in.