Crank

Loved it. I've definitely reread this verse novel several times. It's the kind of book that can keep you seated all day till you reach the last page, and once you reach that last page ... you just want to keep reading.

It goes incredibly in-depth about an average teenage girl named Kristina. But when she visits her dad for the summer, she meets a boy named Adam, who greets her to the monster.

The book is incredibly powerful as you watch the protagonist fall to her knees for the monster, no will power. Being inside the mind of Kristina for the entire book, you watch as her choices become less and less responsible. Readers literally watch how the monster not only effects its abuser, but their friends and family too.

I highly recommend, especially if you're looking for a quick, raw read.

Crank is a great novel and I believe the first one I ever experienced reading in poem verses as well. When I found out it's a fictional story loosely based around Hopkins own daughter, it made the story all the more important. Addiction is tough and can happen to anyone, including your own self or someone amongst your family/friends. It brought out a feeling in me that made me hope for good outcomes as I felt very invested in our main character which any book that can do that for me is great. Also it's a book to remind myself that reading can be such an immersive experience.

Kristina, a character based on the author's own daughter, goes from a model student to a drug addict after discovering crystal meth – also known as “crank”. Told in a series of poems, we follow Kristina as she discovers her alter-ego Bree and becomes an entirely different person so addicted to the crank that she will do anything to get it.


This can be a very upsetting book, but it is a powerful read for teens. Even though it is written by an adult, the author does a good job at portraying the teenage voice that others will be able to relate to. We can sympathize with Kristina as we follow her journey, and throughout the book we only want her to get better, even though it doesn't seem like it will. This book shows the extreme dark side of hard drugs and would make a teen think twice, especially girls, to see if that's really how they want their life to turn out.