REVIEW for In Ecstasy

A huge thank you goes out to www.annickpress.com for sending this book out to me.

TITLE: In Ecstasy

AUTHOR: Kate McCaffrey

GENRE: YA

RATING; 4 Stars

Reading In Ecstasy brought out all types of emotions in me. Although it is billed as a novel, this story could very well be the story of many, many teenage girls out there today.As the book titled indicates this is a story of two good kids - both teen age girls who are each, in their own way, running away from something (or if you listen to them they would tell you that they are running towards something).

Sophie and Mia are best friends and are now teenagers - exploring their way through adolescence and making some extremely, extremely bad choices.As I was reading, I was trying to go back to when I was a teenager and tried to remember my thinking pattern. Of course, the generation was different, but still.....I do remember the horrible feeling or that need to "fit in". I also remember how important my best friend was to me. What I don't remember is the almost casual view of drugs that both Mia and Sophie seem to have. Indeed, in this story both girls seem to have absolutely no second thoughts about trying the drug E. This, somehow, scared me the most here. There were no thoughts of "could this be bad" or at the very least "my mother would kill me if I did this". The girls just casually started using the drugs and actually were sort of proud of this (like it was some kind of rite of passage).

As an adult, I was absolutely horrified as I was reading this book. I could not believe that these girls were left to their own devices so much. The parental influence was minimal at best in this novel and I wanted to scream at the parents "wake up, wake up".

As you can see, I had lots of emotion while reading this scary but all important story that takes a very honest look at our youth of today and the huge pressures (in their own minds?) that they face in fitting it. This storyline also very clearly depicts a lack of fundamental grounding from everybody involved - from the parents right down to the kids.

What I also liked was the interesting relationship between the two main characters - who are best friends, but yet, on many levels, do not seem to "get" each other where it counts.

This book is extremely well written and will definitely bring out all kinds of feelings.

For the teenagers out there - pick this book up and read it, then read it again.