Crank (Crank, #1)

by Ellen Hopkins

[Angie]

After falling madly in love with Identical, I knew I had to go back read the author’s more popular novel, Crank. I wouldn’t say that I liked Crank, because it’s just a dark, rough book, but it is a pretty good one. It just didn’t affect me as much as I was expecting. I was a little put off from the very beginning, since there was no build up to Kristina becoming a meth addict. She goes to visit her father for a few weeks during the Summer, meets a hot guy, and all of a sudden all that she wants is “the monster.”

I felt like pushing off trying drugs to Kristina’s alternate personality, Bree, was interesting, but not a good enough explanation. It just seemed unbelievable that Kristina would just become a new person over night and decide that accepting crank from a boy she just met was a good idea. There was nothing particularly bad about her life, where I could reason that throwing herself into drugs might help. Sure her father is a dead beat and likes to party, but that was about it. A hot guy’s influence? Maybe. But Kristina was a straight A student, had never even kissed a boy, or done anything bad, so I had trouble understanding her decision.

However, Crank is fascinating. I may not have cared for Kristina/Bree’s story, but as a story about meth, I couldn’t flip through the pages fast enough. It’s like the drug became its own character and overshadowed Kristina. Everything she does is because of –or to get a hold of– the monster. It invades every aspect of her life and sets her on a path of destruction. She goes through some awful stuff as her addiction takes hold, and it seems impossible that she’ll get out of it.

Drugs are scary, and I think crank is the scariest of them all (especially after watching a documentary of it in High School Psychology!). While I couldn’t sympathize with Kristina, I was invested in her story, but only because there’s something magnetic about others’ experiences with drug use. I do think that the free verse format works especially well for this story. Bree doesn’t think in full sentences while she’s high, and she probably can’t form coherent thoughts either, so the disjointed poems certainly mimic that. The ending was bittersweet. It’s clear that Kristina is trying to push Bree out of her –and the monster along with– but it’s not just about her any more, and that left me feeling nervous. I’m glad that I have the next books already.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.