Book Review - Clean by Amy Reed

Clean
Author: Amy Reed

Publisher: Simon Pulse
Hardcover: 228 pages 
Published: July 19, 2011

Amazon Summary:

You’re probably wondering how I ended up here. I’m still wondering the same thing.
Olivia, Kelly, Christopher, Jason, and Eva have one thing in common: They're addicts. Addicts who have hit rock bottom and been stuck together in rehab to face their problems, face sobriety, and face themselves. None of them wants to be there. None of them wants to confront the truths about their pasts. And they certainly don’t want to share their darkest secrets and most desperate fears with a room of strangers. But they'll all have to deal with themselves and one another if they want to learn how to live. Because when you get that high, there's nowhere to go but down, down, down.

My thoughts:

For a Drug Rehab book it was oh-so-very tame. Maybe I have been hardened because I think I've read about 90% of the drug memoirs and fiction out there, so this kind of fell flat for me. Also shows like Intervention make seeing the degenerate world of drug addiction appear so commonplace. I happened to read about 300 pages of Ellen Hopkins "Impulse" last week on vacation, and it was hard for me not to compare the two stories. Perhaps since Impulse seemed much darker and...dirtier.  Clean just didn't pack the punch that I was hoping for.

I wish we could have read more about the experiences leading up to them being in rehab. I would have loved a little more back-story from each of the characters. I felt like we were just given glimpses into their lives. Of all the characters, I think Christopher's unique story was the one I would be most interested in hearing more about. The other character's stories blended together for me. Right now I'm trying to recall Kelly's story (She's one of the two main narrators), and I can't really remember her, her background or even what her addiction was. Eva's (another character - the dark emo princess) writing in the third person was irritating, although I might have liked her put-on-wanna-be-poetress-ness more when I was 15.

 I read it fairly quickly, and the story moved along at a very fast pace. The chapters were all different. One would be a normal point of view a character and then the next chapter would have the movie script feel with only dialogue. That did help to break the book up a bit and keep things interesting for me. There were things I liked about the super short alternating points of views and things I didn't. I felt like there wasn't as much depth explored as there should have been. However the script like dialogue made it easy to keep the characters separated, this worked especially well since there was quite a large cast of main characters.

I might be biased because I really never have enjoyed the rehab portion of books. I liked to hear all the sordid details, the slippery slope, basically all the messed up things they did to arrive in rehab.  I mean this is MY personal review, not an objective book report so I guess it's ok to be biased.

I can see how some people will love this book, however I like my "druggie" books too be a little more gritty and shocking. There didn't seem to be much raw emotion. I just couldn't feel it. I wanted to feel the pain, and I just couldn't connect with it.

Judge a Book By It's Cover:
It's original, I have to say that. Although it is kinda blah for me, I'm sure it will stand out on the shelves. 

3 Stars!

Amy Reed - Twitter /Blog

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*Disclosure: I received a galley courtesy of Simon & Schuster. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Did you have a different opinion of "Clean" ? Agree with my opinion? I would love to hear what others thought of this one. Feel free to leave me a link to your review in my comments!