Fallout - Ellen Hopkins

Read Kari's review of Crank and Glass.

Summary:  So You Want to Know

All about her. How

she

really is.  (Was?) Why

she swerved off

the high road.  Hard

left

to nowhere.

recklessly

indifferent to

me,

Hunter Seth Haskins,

her first \born

son.  I've been

choking 

that down for

nineteen years.
Why did she go
on

her mindless way,

leaving me spinning

in a whirlwind of

her dust?

Hunter.  Autumn.  Summer.

Different homes.  Different guardians.  Different last names.

Diffferent lives.

But there is one person who binds them together.

Kristina

Nineteen years after Kristina Snow met the monster--crank--her children are reeling from the consequences of her decisions.  Instead of one big, happy family, they are a desperate tangle of scattered lives united by anger, doubt, and fear.

A predisposition to addiction and a sense of emptiness where a mother's love should be leads all three down the road of their mother's notorious legacy.  Sex, drugs, alcohol, abuse--there is more of Kristina in her children than they would ever like to believe.  But when the thread that ties them together brings them face-to-face, they'll discover something powerful in each other and in themselves--the trust, the hope, the courage to begin to break the cycle.

Fallout is bestselling author Ellen Hopkins riveting conclusion to her trilogy begun by Crank and Glass.  It is a revelation and a testament to the harsh reality that addiction is never just one person's problem.  (Summary from jacket cover and image from http://lifeinthethumb.blogspot.com/ )

My Review:  I almost didn't finish this book.  The first 150 pages were far too depressing and graphic for me.  I barely made it through Glass, but watching Kristina's children fall into the same traps she was bound to was just too depressing.  A friend who'd finished the series last year changed my mind.  She said I just needed to give this one more time because it was the most hopeful and positive of all the books.  While I still found it incredibly vulgar and depressing, because of the choices Kristina's children made, they did leave the book with less screw-ups and less perversion.  At least, they knew they were making poor choices and were angry with themselves for doing so. 

I was particularly bothered by the sex scenes and the characters' willingness to obsess and crave it with little or no restraint.  I don't like the message that sends adolescents.  I'm more hesitant to recommend this book to students than the first, because Crank was at least meth-induced insanity and not a purposeful choice to enter a world with little or no morals.

My Rating: 3 Stars

For the sensitive reader:  Read at your own risk:  Lots of sex, drugs, alcohol done/used by minors interspersed with crude swearing.

Sum it up:  A message about the consequences of drug addiction on not only the addict, but everyone associated with them.