Week 3 Review: Roxy

From Goodreads:

From the team that brought you the New York Times bestselling Dry comes a riveting new thriller that proves when gods play games, even love is a lie.

The freeway is coming.

It will cut the neighborhood in two. Construction has already started, pushing toward this corridor of condemned houses and cracked concrete with the momentum of the inevitable. Yet there you are, in the fifth house on the left, fighting for your life.

Ramey, I.

The victim of the bet between two manufactured gods: the seductive and lethal Roxy (Oxycontin), who is at the top of her game, and the smart, high-achieving Addison (Adderall), who is tired of being the helpful one, and longs for a more dangerous, less wholesome image. The wager—a contest to see who can bring their mark to "the Party" first—is a race to the bottom of a rave that has raged since the beginning of time. And you are only human, dazzled by the lights and music. Drawn by what the drugs offer—tempted to take that step past helpful to harmful…and the troubled places that lie beyond.

But there are two I. Rameys—Isaac, a soccer player thrown into Roxy's orbit by a bad fall and a bad doctor and Ivy, his older sister, whose increasing frustration with her untreated ADHD leads her to renew her acquaintance with Addy.

Which one are you?

My Review:
This was a really great, but really difficult, book to read. Because it's about drugs, about abusing them, and we know it's going to end poorly for one of the Ramey siblings. But which one is the question, since they're both using different drugs, drugs that are in a competition with the Party.

I don't know personally anyone who has been addicted to drugs, as far as I'm aware. I'm lucky, I'm sheltered, but I also don't have a lot of social interaction. Books are my drug, so in some ways it was really easy to see how addicting they can be, to make poor choices. But it's a really tough topic.

The whole thing with the Party that the drugs were having, trying to bring people there, to the VIP area where they go to die...it's kinda terrifying. Especially since "Roxy" and "Addison" were both meant to help, not hurt. Which can be done, and is easier with the later then the former, if you take it as prescribed. 

That ending was just incredible sad. We knew it was coming, it was in the synopsis, and the first chapter. But it was still hard to read about that death, when we watched the 2 months leading up to it, all the poor choices that were being made. It was hard, and it was sad. The good news is that the other sibling does make it through, and turns their life around.

This was a really great book, and I'm glad that it exists!

Authors: Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman  
Read: January 14th, 2023
Source: Bought 
Reason Why: Love his writing and it sounded really good, and it's a SAC 2023 Book and a WoW Book! 
Publisher: Simon Schuster Books for Young Readers
Published: November 9th 2021

5/5 Hearts

5/5 Books

1/5 Stars