Roxy

The father-son writing team of Neal and Jarrod Shusterman (Dry) successfully takes on the opioid epidemic in their riveting, tense sophomore novel.

Eighteen-year-old Ivy Ramey struggles with ADD while her younger brother, Isaac, is on track to become a propulsion engineer. Though Isaac is a year younger than Ivy, he often feels like the older sibling as he repeatedly bails her out of bad situations. On one of these nights, Isaac sustains an ankle injury that threatens his chances of earning a soccer scholarship. His pain, the stress of his parents' financial worries and his sister's behavior turn Isaac to the oxycodone Roxicet--"Roxy"--to soothe his woes. At the same time, Ivy is faced with the possibility of flunking out of high school and chooses to obtain a prescription for Adderall--"Addison"--to help her focus and take control of her life. Addison is always on the periphery--"in the Party, but not of the Party"--while Roxy is "so hot right now." The two "gods" wager to see who can be the first one to bring their "plus-one" to the Party (a stand-in for altered states) and into the intimate, deadly VIP Lounge.

Roxy uses point of view to explore the effects of drug dependency and abuse: third-person limited to get inside the heads of the teen addicts and surprising first-person perspectives from individual drugs. In the opening chapter, one of the Ramey siblings dies from a drug overdose. From there, the authors backtrack two months to follow Ivy and Isaac on their downward spirals as well as the drugs themselves, delivering powerful, tense scenes that elicit empathy and compassion. Roxy is a dark, gritty cautionary tale about the dangers--to oneself and to loved ones--of addiction. --Lana Barnes, freelance reviewer and proofreader

Powered by: Xtenit