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QueenBoadicea
Jul 05, 2015QueenBoadicea rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
The author has crafted an almost painful story of growing up, of being forced to strip away blindness and ignorance and face up to the horrible truths in one’s life. The protagonist, one Emily Bird, has been striving all her life to be the perfect little girl for her parents, schoolmates, boyfriend and authority itself. The story of how she’s forced to shed her illusions and become her own person is written in such glaring terms it’s almost hard to read; it’s like peeking inside someone’s journal and finding out they’ve got a fatal illness they’re determined to keep from the world. That being said, the circumstances of Bird’s maturation are almost incidental to her story. There is a menacing authority figure who does little more than threaten, lie and manipulate her. If he’s part of something larger, we almost never see them or the people for whom he’s working. There are no scenes of kidnapping, of torture, rape or brutal men doling out physical intimidation. The pandemic sweeping out of control remains a distant threat, hardly reason enough to panic. The few acquaintances of Bird’s that it strikes usually die off screen, as it were. Bird could just as easily have been forced to grow up because of any number of other scenarios; it’s just this one—a shadow conspiracy involving a manmade disease and a secret Bird herself can’t remember—is the background of the book. Without the strong character of Bird at its center, the plotline would be a meaningless retread of so many others of its kind involving government schemes and secret agents. “Love is the Drug” therefore works solely because of the interactions of its people and getting to know them is the engine that drives this novel. Powerful, intense and gripping from start to finish, this book gets under your skin like the drugs heading each chapter.