REVIEW for Lifeline by Abbey Lee Nash

Thank you to the wonderful people at Tiny Fox Press for sending me an electronic copy of this book to read and review.

TITLE:                  Lifeline

AUTHOR:             Abbey Lee Nash

GENRE:                YA

RATING:                4 Stars

I am rating this book 4 stars because it tackles a difficult subject - substance and recovery and does it, for the most part, well.

The first few chapters are extremely well written and the reader jumps right into the action, as we sit with the main character who immediately shows us, via his actions, that he is a full fledged junkie, even if he is a Lacrosse star.

The honest look at addiction and recovery is also well done as we are transported to rehab with Elie..  Once in rehab, Elie must learn to admit that he is a junkie, but also what his triggers are.  One the good side, Elie, while almost completely unlikeable has moments of kindness towards his friends in rehab and this, despite seeing his "perfect" life outside rehab crumble.  

Elie, as I mentioned, is not a particularly likeable character and that's okay, however, he is also, at times, quite a vanilla character - somehow not bad, but not good either, I suppose he represents the average person who has gotten in over their head with drugs.  However, this makes for a bit of a boring story once he enters rehab (and that is pretty early in the story).  I like that he makes some friends, but the whole Libby thing is completely over the top and I could have done without it.  Why the need for "romance" especially since everyone knows that recovery is NOT a place to find your next date.

I definitely liked the earlier part of this book  more than the recovery part, but overall this was written well, paced well and obviously researched well.

A good read.