Unfortunately this one wasn’t for me, I DNF so won’t leave a review , I’m sure others will enjoy this , just not me sadly

Thank you to NetGalley for the eARC of Roxy by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman.
I really love Neal Shusterman, and I am slowly but surely getting through his books!
As always, Roxy takes a unique perspective of a real life issue.
The book tackles addiction, and relays the message that addiction can happen to anyone as we watch two very different siblings go through the struggle.
Thought provoking, deep, and well written.

Loved this book. Unique kind of story with personified drugs. Liked the two perspectives of the siblings as well.

Thank you to the author and the publisher for allowing me access to this book and thank you to netgalley for allowing me to give feedback on these books.

This book tackled a lot of big issues, especially in the real world and I think this talks in-depth and shows how it can affect others. I think this book was well thought out and needs to be read by a lot of people as it has a great concept.

That was a wild ride. An exploration of addiction through the eyes of the people it takes and the drugs themselves. I was absolutely gripped throughout. A really interesting perspective telling and a sad story to be told: a young man, addiction and how it takes over. Poor Isaac.

Roxy is a compelling read with an interesting approach to tackle the issue of drug use and addiction in young adults. By establishing the dichotomy between siblings Isaac and Ivy; the high achieving jock and the slacker party girl; the authors are able to establish the central message that addiction is not selective but can affect anyone. Both teenagers consume prescription drugs, those that are meant to be part of a cure for their mental and physical pain, but with vastly different results. By personifying the drugs into characters, the reader gets caught up in the idea of companionship that the drugs provide, and the strengthening bond that is increasingly difficult to break.
I particular found the concept of the party environment that the 'drug characters' inhabit especially powerful, illustrating how beguiling the addiction lifestyle becomes.
Highly recommend.

This is an intense but so cleverly written book, which anthropomorphises a wide selection of drugs. The book focuses on addiction and how drug use can both help and harm, and I think does it quite respectfully. The author always writes books to make you think, and that is exactly what Roxy does.

I received a copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Neal Shusterman’s Arc of a Scythe series is very popular within the book blogging/BookTube world and it’s a series that I’ve been interested in for a while. Despite owning the first two books, I’ve not had a chance to pick them up yet (story of my life!) but I was very excited to read his newest release, co-authored with his son Jarrod.

When the sensual yet fatal Roxy places a bet with her overachieving friend Addison to see who can bring someone to ‘The Party’ first, siblings Isaac and Ivy Ramey are in their dangerous and deadly firing line. Of course, the bright lights and the sweet relief of the drugs are incredibly attractive to unassuming minds and the Rameys are both on a fast track to the trouble that lies beyond the grip of their new best friends.

I can honestly say that I have never read from the point of view of drugs themselves before. Roxy is Oxycontin, a powerful opiod prescribed as a painkiller to Isaac after a football injury. Watching her slow takeover of his mind as he develops a dependency on her (through her ‘eyes’) was so disturbing but an incredibly unique perspective. I imagined Roxy to be a beautiful, dark seductress, who completely bewitched the helpless, mere mortal, teenage Isaac. I can imagine that developing an addiction is exactly like getting into an intense, toxic relationship that you don’t realise is bad for you until it’s way too late.

Watching the drugs interact with each other at ‘The Party’, which I can only assume is some kind of invisible venue that is not on our plain, where they all congregate. Al (alcohol) is always there because he gets everywhere. Molly (MDMA), Mary Jane (marijuana), the Coke brothers Charlie and Dusty (cocaine) and Crys (crystal meth) are all regular fixtures at The Party. I was blown away by the detail of this strange yet somehow plausible world that the Shustermans built for these drugs to inhabit.

Ivy has unmedicated ADHD, which causes her to run into trouble at school. To get through her final year, she takes Addison (Adderall) to up her focus and energy levels in order to get her work done. She is terrible at picking friends and boyfriends and I think this is due to a plethora of emotional issues that she hasn’t ever dealt with. When Addison starts making her life a whole lot better, I think she started to see him as the lifeline that she had been waiting for and it’s easy to see why. Her relationship with Isaac is a really lovely, realistic one and it’s very obvious that there is so much love between the siblings.

There are little interludes throughout the book where we hear from other drugs. I loved getting to know them all as ethereal, unreliable characters and I definitely learned a lot about how they behave. I can only imagine the fun that the Shustermans must have had while writing these. They’re so well researched and the amount of imagination that they must have taken is mind-blowing.

I think Phineas (morphine) was the drug that haunted me the most. Hearing him talk about his different uses and how he feels about them gave me such an overwhelming feeling of dread. Of course, Phineas is often administered when people are on the brink of death or in extreme pain. He never sees the bright side of human life and as a result, I couldn’t picture him as anything other than an empty, dark void, floating around these people’s systems.

Roxy is a very thought-provoking, unforgettable book. I was completely torn apart by the ending and I finished it knowing that I would probably never read another book like it. With themes such as addiction, mental health and suicide, it’s definitely best to proceed with trepidation if you are likely to be triggered by any of these topics. It is haunting, cautionary and truly fascinating with voices that literally burrow into your system and refuse to leave.

Please be aware of the content warning of drug addiction and overdosing, it may not be suitable for some.

A gritty, gripping read that I couldn’t put down! I don’t usually read books about addiction but I love Neil’s other books so I thought I’d give this a try and I’m glad I did!
The book follows Isaac and his sister Ivy as they both struggle with their addictions- Roxy & Addison, who also have POV’s in the story.
The story starts with Isaac - a grade A student who knows what he wants in his life and how to achieve it and Ivy - who has ADHD and struggles with school and family life.
Isaac hurts his ankle whilst fighting with his sisters boyfriend and ends up taking one of his grandma’s pain pills to help him recover and ease the pain. He soon realises that the pain is not going away and starts taking more pills so he can play a football (soccer) game so that potential scouts can see him in action. This starts a spiral of events for him that take him down a very dark alley.
Whilst Isaac is slowly going down, Ivy decides it might be time to take her ADHD medicine and soon turns her life around in a full 180.

Eventually Isaac realises he is addicted to the pills, but is it too late for him to save himself?

Having Roxy & Addison as ‘God’s’ and them having their own point of view was brilliant, it made me feel more relatable to them and made me root for them in their own disastrous ways.

Roxy has opened my eyes to addiction and how it can change ordinary people in so many ways. I would recommend the book to ages 14+ as it does deal with addiction. The authors have done a good job in keeping the actual drug use to just swallowing pills and there’s no other mention of how other drugs can be used. They do not make the drug use fun or make the reader think that copying the characters will be a good idea, it is all written in context and will hopefully open peoples eyes on how easy it can be to become addicted.

Thank you to the authors, publisher & NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Roxy by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman is one of the cleverest books I have read all year. The premise is deceptively simple, beyond our world there is a toxic wonderland where a party has raged for centuries. The partygoers are god like and have complicated relationships with the humans they bring to the party as a plus one. Though they call each other by names like Roxy and Addison, they are also known as Oxycontin and Adderall, because at this party the gods can also be monsters, toying with their human targets until they pass the point of no return.
The book opens with the death of a character, though the identity of that character is deliberately ambiguous for reasons that become clear as the book unfolds. That death is the result of a wager between Roxy and Addison , both of whom are tired of being minor players , good for introducing people to the party, but ultimately losing out to their more powerful family members. When siblings Ivy and Isaac Ramey are introduced to Addison and Roxy respectively, it seems like the perfect opportunity to carry out the wager.
The book alternates between the perspectives of the anthropomorphised drugs and the teens who are taking them, at first legitimately as prescribed , then later because of a developing dependence. The insidious nature of addiction is explored cleverly , and while the use of humour might seem incongruous I thought it fit the capricious natures of the drug characters. I also really liked the formatting of the book, there are little not so hidden messages in the chapter headings and in a couple of other spots that were fun to pick out, it was a nice added touch. I also appreciated the clever way the book discussed the history of drug misuse and abuse.
If I had one issue with the book it was the way that medications like Adderall , and to a lesser extent Ritalin, were portrayed as being as seductive and dangerous as opiates like oxycontin etc, this is something of a slippery slope, especially given how many people these medications have helped, and how many more they could help if there were less of a stigma and fewer barriers attached to their use. As a pharmacist in my day to day work I see what a huge difference appropriate use of these medications can make, but I am also aware that they do have a potential to be abused or misused and I know the authors were walking a particularly fine line.
Overall this was one of the cleverest and most original books I read this year .
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.