I was browsing the book section at Target when the pills on the cover caught my eye. I've read many teen books about addiction, so I figured I'd give this one a shot.
I feel like this book kind of glossed over the raw aspect of addiction. It's a good starter book into this darker side of literature. But it's not quite there yet.
You'd Be Home Now is written through Emmy's perspective, but I wish it was written alternating Emmy and Joey's POV. Just hearing Emmy's side made her seem like such an unlikable character. She enabled her brother for so long, and I'm glad she realizes that eventually. It's easy to recognize an enabler from the outside, but those people don't usually notice it themselves.
Author Kathleen Glasgow, mentioned while writing this, she referred back to her own journal entries in the midst of her addiction. And I think she really missed an awesome opportunity to share similar journal entries for Joey. I wanted to read more of Joey's story through Joey's POV. Addiction is messy and whole families struggle to get through it. But we didn't really see that in this book. Everything was tied up in a nice little bow by the end of the story. Though, Emmy's assignment does try to tell us differently. She says "It doesn't give you a happy ending, because, well, life doesn't. Not always. Sometimes it might make you wait a long, long time for it, and even then, it might not look like what you'd imagined."
Like I said earlier, it's a good starter book for this topic. But it barely brushed the surface of what addiction can do to a family. It just doesn't dig into the deepest, darkest parts like I was expecting it to.
If you need something more try these books:
Resources from You'd Be Home Now:
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