While I have always appreciated realistic and gritty stories—take a look at some of my favorites, Little Peach and Living Dead Girl—something about drugs has always put me off.
I didn’t like Ellen Hopkins’ Crank, though I know it was meant to show how damaging drugs are. Something about it made me feel foul and I was beyond relieved when I finished it. The same went for this book.
Pearl has had a hard life. She grew up with her mom, Janet Jaeger, a rock star who introduced her daughter to drugs at an early age. When Pearl is whisked off to boarding school, she can’t help feeling broken because of her abusive childhood.
Pearl spent the majority of the book wandering around glumly and sneaking out to parties. Besides the drugs, though, there was an absolutely ridiculous romance. Pearl and Grant instantly fell in love and had a “no talking, just kissing” rule that, for some crazy reason, was portrayed as a positive thing.
Pearl’s very happiness depended on Grant. When he left school for the summer, Pearl was miserably counting down the days until his return. I found it disturbing that a young girl would place all of her self-worth on some guy. Grant was like the unhealthy drugs she was taking—an addiction.
Plus, the “romantic” dialogue was so cheesy:
“Every moment, moments between moments, there you are, radiant and brave, wild, like starlight.”
I’m pretty sure the average teenage guy never talks like that. It gets worse:
“I’m afraid if I get too close to you, it might burn. Painfully like the spark of a dying sun. And if you get too close to me, we’ll disappear into a black hole.”
I felt like Grant was trying to recite poetry to Pearl or something.
I really enjoyed Hall’s novel, Sugar, which focused on an unhealthy relationship with food, but Pearl was a much less interesting character than Sugar, and I couldn’t bring myself to care about her life that seemed to revolve around Grant.
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