Roxy

This allegorical novel by Neal and Jarrod Shusterman is a commentary on the opioid crisis in America. Told from the perspective of Oxycontin (Roxy) and Adderall (Addison), the two characters are in a competition to bring a plus-one to the Party and get them all the way to the VIP room (death). They have chosen a set of siblings – Isaac Ramey for Roxy, and his sister Ivy for Addison.

Isaac is a soccer player, and after spraining an ankle his grandmother gives him one of her pain pills – Roxy. Ivy has a lot of issues, and her parents take her to a psychologist who prescribes Adderall to help her focus. The book focuses on these main characters and their downward spiral into the relationships they share with their respective drugs.

Also featured in asides throughout the book are other drugs – Roxy’s cousin Phineas (Morphine), her up-line Hiro (Heroin), Addison’s competition, the Coke brothers and good old friend Al (cohol).

Roxy is a dark book told well. There are many books that deal with teenage addiction, but none before this told from the perspective of the drugs themselves. A worthy read, but a troubling one.

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Bad Girls Never Say Die

Two things made me know I wanted to read this book – the first being it was written by Moxie author Jennifer Mathieu, and the second being that it was billed as a gender-flipped reimagining of The Outsiders. The Outsiders was the first novel I bought myself as a seventh grader (and I still have it), so I was very interested in seeing what Mathieu did with it.

Our “Ponyboy” is Evie Barnes, a fifteen-year-old bad girl with bad girl friends, Connie, Sunny, and Juanita. Evie lives with her mother and grandmother and has an older sister, Cheryl, who “had” to get married and now lives with her military husband in base housing. One night at the drive-in, Evie makes the mistake of going to the bathroom alone, where she is attacked by a boy from the “right side of the tracks.” Evie passes out, and when she awakens, she is met by Diane Farris, a former River Oaks girl who now attends Eastside High. Diane is covered in blood and confesses she has killed the boy attacking Evie, but that she just meant to scare him.

Over the course of the book, it is easy to spot characters inspired by S.E. Hinton – Betty, a former friend of Diane serving as the Cherry Valance, Connie, whose parents don’t notice she or her brother are alive except when beating them, reminiscent of Johnny Cade. Diane herself seems a combination of Dallas and Johnny. But the relationships between the girls is all-original. Taking place in Houston in 1964, Mathieu paints a world where girls don’t have many options and where there’s a fine line between a good girl and a bad one.

I cried when the book ended, which tells me Mathieu created such a real world for her bad girls that I was sucked in completely. If you’re a fan of The Outsiders, you will love this book. (You might love it even if you’re not a fan.) Fabulous story, well-defined characters, and a breath of fresh historical fiction air for a modern society.

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You Can Go Your Own Way

In Eric Smith’s newest YA novel, protagonist Adam Stillwater is doing his damnedest to hold onto his late father’s legacy – Old City Arcade, a pinball arcade whose time is pretty much up. Adam is working to complete “The Beast” – a custom pinball machine dream of his father’s, focusing on Philadelphia kitsch. But money is tight, and Mom can’t keep working as a professor AND running the failing arcade.

His former friend Whitney Mitchell helps run her father’s businesses – ESports cafes. Her father is interested in acquiring Old City Arcade and turning it into the third cafe in his franchise. As Whitney’s life is falling apart – her brother has broken a machine at Adam’s arcade, her boyfriend dumped her, and she’s realizing her friends are just interested in what her dad can do for them – a Twitter feud and a snowstorm put her in the arcade, alone with Adam, for a night.

Trapped with only each other and a little dog named Coco for company, the two find that they’re not as different from each other as they thought, and maybe they could let go of parental legacies and responsibilities to be who they really want to be.

Smith peppers the book with lots of 80s musical references, an homage to the character of Adam’s father, which I love as an 80s baby myself. It’s done well so as not to be dated – Adam wears his father’s band T-shirts and leather jacket, and Whitney has no clue who the bands are that he’s displaying. I was drawn in within the first few pages and was choking up and had tears welling by the end. A great, fun book about, well, finding your own way. Another winning YA novel by Eric Smith. Read it. You need to.

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