Review: Smashed

Aug

2012

Summary: Stay out of trouble for one more year, and Katie Martin can leave her small town loneliness behind forever. She is a field hockey star on the fast track to a college scholarship, but her relationship with alcohol has always been a little questionable. Then trouble finds her. Alec is the most popular guy in school, and also the biggest bully—with his sights set firmly on Katie. When Alec turns on the charm, Katie thinks she must have been wrong about him. Except that she wasn’t. On a rain-soaked, alcohol-drenched night, one impulsive decision leaves Katie indebted to Alec in the worst possible way.

My Thoughts: It’s going to be hard to discuss this without sharing details one might not know going into the book. While I wouldn’t call any of it hugely spoiling, it very well could remove any shock value that a reader might not want removed, so the majority of this review will be treated as spoilers.

Possible Spoilers

When first starting on the book, we know that we’re dealing with alcohol addiction, largely thanks to the description. Which is fine – it’s good to know what you’re getting into when it’s not all rainbows and unicorns. We also get that we’re getting into a book with a guy who’s bad news. But, we have no idea just how deep, dark, and sobering this book will be. I found myself right off the bat wondering what being “indebted to Alec in the worst possible way” might mean. Does she end up pregnant? What else could there be? And then it happens. The drunk driving. The car accident. Both of them seriously injured. The lie around exactly what happened. Alex has that over her head, and it enables him to harass her. She doesn’t feel like she can ask anyone for help, because it would most likely lead to her having to tell the truth about the accident. And she can’t do that because if the truth got out she could lose her scholarship.

Continue Spoilers

Sensitive readers, beware: Not only do we have alcoholism, but there is some seriously awful bullying by Alec. And, unfortunately, a rape scene. It’s written very well. There are not a lot of graphic details (for which I am extremely grateful), but enough to make it hit the reader hard. Katie’s narration of her just getting through that horrible moment was very real, and it was hard not to look away while reading (if that makes any sense). The reader has an inkling that this might be coming, as Alec attempts to force her during a “date” before the accident. She successfully gets him to back off. After the accident, though, he’s clearly stalking her – and he seems to believe that she owes him something. You can see the inevitability of the rape coming a mile away, all the while hoping against hope that it won’t happen. When it finally happens, it’s a heart-breaking scene.

Continued Spoilers

Obviously, it’s after this that all hell breaks loose for Katie. She’s suddenly afraid of everything to the point of not being able to sleep. So she turns to alcohol, knowing it’ll help her relax enough to sleep. Then she has to go back to school, at which point she feels that having the buffer of alcohol is the only way to be able to go back. To even see (as in visually look at) Alec again. It doesn’t take long for people to notice, and she ends up in rehab.

Spoiler

OK, so the above might be a complete plot spoiler, but I feel it’s necessary to discuss all of this to do a good review. There are lots of small things – like her relationship with her best friends Cassie and Matt – that I’m not touching on. There are other things, like her barely there mother and her brother almost always being at his friend’s house. (It’s little surprise, knowing all of that, to find that Katie’s a bit of a party animal. She has NO adult supervision.) Lots of these things I will leave to you to discover.

Short, sweet, and spoiler-free: I can’t really say I enjoyed this book, because the subject is not very enjoyable. It’s a hard book to read; it’s very heavy/weighty, and I don’t think I’d let a younger teen read it. I’m not sure they could handle the saddest, most sobering part: the rape scene. Luedeke handles it well, but it was still quite hard for me, a thirtysomething, to read. It kind of reminds me of Jennifer Brown’s Bitter End in that it handles a (different) tough, not-so-fun subject quite well. Sensitive readers, beware: There’s not just alcoholism in this book. If you want to know what else there is, just read the spoilers above.

Source: Received through Around the World Tours for review.

Read It: Get your own copy HERE. (This is a Book Depository link, and purchase through this link will result in my receiving a small commission at no cost to you. Your support is appreciated!)

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FTC Disclosure: All items reviewed were either obtained by me for my own enjoyment or sent (from the author, publisher, publicist, via tour sites, etc.) in exchange for an honest review. I receive no monetary compensation for my posts. All opinions expressed are my own. Any exceptions to this are clearly noted in the appropriate posts.

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