Glass by Ellen Hopkins
pages: 681
released: August 2007
publisher: McElderry Books
cover love: ♥♥
Crank. Glass. Ice. Crystal. Whatever you call it, it’s all the same: a monster. And once it’s got hold of you, this monster will never let you go. Kristina thinks she can control it. Now with a baby to care for, she’s determined to be the one deciding when and how much, the one calling the shots. But the monster is too strong, and before she knows it, Kristina is back in its grips. She needs the monster to keep going, to face the pressures of day-to-day life. She needs it to feel alive. Once again the monster takes over Kristina’s life and she will do anything for it, including giving up the one person who gives her the unconditional love she craves — her baby. (from Goodreads)
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON 4/19/2012 ON BOOKSLIKESTARS.NET
Review:
When I read Ellen Hopkins’s first book, Crank, I was completely mesmerized by her writing style and how much her main character, Kristina had rooted herself in my brain. I knew then that her books would always have a home on my bookshelf (right now, I own seven).
I took some time between reading Crank and reading the sequel. And let me tell you, I knew she’d go back to “the monster” but I wasn’t at all prepared for what this second journey to hell spiraled into. What your left with at the end of Crank is some type of hope. Hope that Kristina is going to fly straight, for her baby, for her family, and for herself. But as you dive into the first few pages of this book, you realize there was never any hope. That inside her, is a ticking time-bomb right back to disaster. That she’s more than willing and overly excited to succumb to this drug once again, even while knowing the damage it will cause. She reaches new, indescribable highs when she’s introduced to Mexican meth–glass–which is a higher grade of meth that she binges on for days and days at a time, no sleep, no food, only stopping when her body just can’t take anymore and crashes. In Glass, you see a much darker side of her personality and motives, to the point where you don’t think you’re reading about the same character from the first book. Even when I was nearly finished and had watched Kristina sink to new lows to feed her addiction, hurting her family tremendously, I thought maybe there would be some miracle at the end where she would do a turnaround. Sadly, there really wasn’t a happily ever ending. Nowhere near it. And because I read the blurb for the last book in the trilogy, Fallout, I know that things just get worse and worse for her.
I don’t know what it is about these books but they always have an affect on me. I actually do feel like Kristina when I’m reading about her. Maybe it’s because our personalities are similar. Not the part of her that’s an addict or the part of her that has a naughty alter-ego, but that part of her that’s looking to be loved by someone and the part of her that feels pressured to live up to expectations she knows she can’t. After finishing the books, I felt depressed and sat around just thinking about all the events that took place. I’m a mom and it kind of scares me that no matter how perfect you try and raise your child, something like this could still happen to them. I think what bothered me most was Kristina turning her back on her son and those times when she couldn’t care for him because she was too high. That she chose drugs over her baby was too much for me to handle at times.
Once again, Ellen Hopkins has gotten underneath my skin. This book scared the shit out of me but I still loved it. The author has such a way with words and I will always be a fan. I am going to read Fallout soon but I have to take a break between these books, they’re too intense for me to read back-to-back and I know the last book is going to be a really sad one.
5
