Thank you to Netgalley, Juno Dawson and Quercus for my ARC of Clean.
Title: Clean

Author: Juno Dawson

Publication Date: 5th April 2018

Page Count: 400 Pages

Quotes: 'there's a certain grim satisfaction in watching little girls ripen and spoil, isn't there? Everything inside is gangrene and cigarette butts.'
'Using the C word has to be well-timed. I love that there's still a word in the English language that has any power to shock whatsoever. It's just another word for my bits you guys, chill out! You know what I think it is? I think guys don't want girls to have that word, even though it's ours.'

Rating: 5*

Summary
Lexi Volkov is a socialite. Her father owns a chain of hotels and leaves her and her brother mostly alone with a string of credit cards and an attitude that she can do anything she wants. Lexi has lived in hotels all her life, a privileged life where she can have anything she wants, or that's how it seems from the outside.
Lexi is also a drug addict, together with her boyfriend Kurt she spends all her free time and money on coke, Oxy, Diazepam, heroin, whatever she can get her hands on. That is until she takes a bad trip, overdoses and her brother Nik ships her off to an exclusive rehab facility on an island far away.

With no phone, no contact with the outside world and only the other patients to keep her company, Lexi has no choice but to come off the drugs, the hard way. But it is what she learns about herself and others along the way that makes the story.

Review
This story is one of the best I ever read, if you imagine Trainspotting for younger readers meets Gossip Girl meets The Taste of Blue Light then you're almost there.
Lexi is a very likeable character, despite her problems, despite her bitchiness and entitlement, she's a great character to read and experience. I've never really read anything about addiction and putting these problems on a 17 year old is a really different and new take on other addiction novels. It really highlights the difference between novels like Trainspotting which focus on 'skagheads' and the Uber glamorous world of the rich and famous and the things they do which would be considered unacceptable in other circles.
The novel does deal with a lot of other issues such as eating disorders, alcohol addiction, sex addiction, mental health, transgender and transphobia, homophobia, alcohol addiction and death. But it is 100% a book you need to have you on your TBR this year. I feel like I've taken so much from it and I already feel the Book hangover coming on!

I first downloaded the sampler for this book and from that small snippet I was desperate to get my hands on the full novel. I was therefore overjoyed to be granted early access to the e-ARC and as soon as I got the notification email I impatiently waited for the proof to download so I get reading.

Clean follows teen socialite Lexi Volkov as she finds herself unwillingly put in rehab. It's a serious subject matter but the writing is laced with sharp wit and the subject is met face-on with no shying away from the most gruesome aspects of recovery. At no point within the book is drug-use glamorised, in spite of the prestigious world Lexi inhabits which is the background for her story. Dawson creatively manages to portray the parties and drug-use in a somewhat sad, lamentable way even before Lexi begins to take rehab seriously. Lexi may be in denial about her addiction but the reader is left in no doubt how serious her problem is, how unhappy she clearly is and how destructive her relationships are. This is, I feel, one of the most important things that this book had to achieve. Aimed at a young adult audience, it's of the utmost importance to portray addiction starkly and honestly without patronising or censoring. Dawson has masterfully achieved this.

I really enjoyed the character development of Lexi. She was a fully fleshed out, real person leaping off the page. Her journey in rehab seemed realistic and the person she became by the end of the book made sense. She didn't become an entirely different person and her problems didn't simply melt away. She was flawed at the beginning of the book and she was flawed at the end and I loved the realness of that.

I would highly recommend this book to fans of Gossip Girl and Trainspotting.

I only received a sample of this book but I was hooked and will definitely go for the full book when it's released.

Clean is a sharp and in your face young adult novel about addiction, recovery, and seeing everyone has different problems. Lexi Volkov is an heiress and socialite whose dad owns a chain of hotels. When she overdoses aged seventeen, she finds herself forced into an expensive rehab facility by her older brother, and thinks things can’t get any worse. She’s drawn into knowing more about the others in the facility, unravelling their problems along with her own, but can she really change? Can any of them?

Dawson has written the kind of hard-hitting and abrasive YA novel that needs to exist and is difficult to put down. Lexi is obnoxious at times—insulting and judging people in her head and more openly—and makes a great flawed central character, someone who doesn’t want to admit their addition or the ways in which their life has become centred around it. Most of the characters come from money and privileged, meaning the book also has a level of seeing how the elite live, whilst showing problems that the characters must admit don’t care about wealth or position.

Setting the novel predominantly in a rehab centre for under 24s means that it covers a variety of kinds of addiction and ways in which mental health affect people particularly when young, but also that it can have witty and harsh banter and modern pop culture references mixed in. Lexi is always ready to mock current hipster and celebrity culture even though she’s a part of it, and it’s a novel that loves as well as hates London for what it can offer. There’s plenty of seriousness and darkness in the novel—from death, drugs, and sex to what happens when all the options seem to be failing someone with mental health problems—but also fantastic characters and a sense of hope that people can pick themselves up from their lowest depths.

Clean doesn’t pull any punches. It deals with difficult topics—drug, alcohol, and sex addiction, anorexia and binge eating, and OCD are among some of the major ones—and shows another side to the life of the rich and privileged. Dawson shows how young adult novels don’t need to shy away from gritty topics that can’t always be neatly fixed. At the same time, she situates the book firmly in the contemporary world, in a recognisable London and with a modern sense of image versus reality engendered by the internet and social media. This is YA fiction being loud and bold.

Such an exciting opening chapter, can't wait to read the rest

A brilliant opening chapter which will make it impossible for anyone to resist picking up a finished copy when the book publishes later in the year. Juno pulls no punches, quickly representing Lexi as one of the worst characters you have ever met, and it'll be interesting to see whether she redeems herself after her stint in rehab.

Great introduction chapter into Lexi going in to rehabilitation at the hands of her brother.
Really great pace of writing and already has me hooked wanting more

Perfect opening and a brilliant sampler. It is a clear first person narrative and sets up the story in such a way that I want to know more.

A really promising start - I can't wait to read the full book!

I downloaded a sample of this book which contained the first chapter of the novel.. As always, Juno's writing is sharp and witty and conversational, and so I shot through this very quickly. Enjoyed how spoiled and conceited Lexi was - the protagonist doesn't always have to be likeable! Keen to see where this goes.

An interesting little chapter sample. I often struggle with these as I find I can never truly get a feel for a novel from a couple of chapters alone. However, I found this quite engaging - although the main character was largely unlikeable. One to look out for.

I'm hooked after one chapter!

I simply adore Juno and her writing style, and in this one she's certainly not afraid to start the book with a bang! Clean is fairly self-explanatory from the title, and it's something that I've not come across in YA before, which is refreshing. To be honest, I wasn't even sure if I'd be that interested in a book about drug addiction, but I can't wait to read more!

I just read the chapter sampler of Clean on NetGalley and I already love it! The protagonist is sharp, witty and ferocious when dealing with such a difficult subject matter.

She made me laugh after one or two pages and I already feel completely invested in her character. I can't wait to read this book when it's released!