Ballads of Suburbia by Stephanie Kuehnert

[description from Amazon]

Kara hasn't been back to Oak Park since the end of junior year, when a heroin overdose nearly killed her and sirens heralded her exit. Four years later, she returns to face the music. Her life changed forever back in high school: her family disintegrated, she ran around with a whole new crowd of friends, she partied a little too hard, and she fell in love with gorgeous bad-boy Adrian, who left her to die that day in Scoville Park....

Amid the music, the booze, the drugs, and the drama, her friends filled a notebook with heartbreakingly honest confessions of the moments that defined and shattered their young lives. Now, finally, Kara is ready to write her own.

Review:

I can count on one hand the number of books that have "wow"ed me this year. I've read some meh, average, better than average, and the occasional awesome book, but only 4 or 5 that have made me go "wow." This book is one of that wowed me.

This book is definitely not an easy read- it's full of hard-hitting issues: drugs, cutting, all sorts of others. With heavy books like this, I usually need to stop every so often and think about what I'm reading, but I could not put this one down. I found myself going "one more chapter, just one more" and then I'd go from page 100 to 250 without even realizing it. Reading about Kara is heartbreaking- I almost cried at one point- but I was compelled to keep reading about the many ups and downs in her life. There's never a dull moment- even in the beginning, when older Kara is speaking, not teenage Kara.

The ballads- stories of the characters' lives and why they act like they do, basically- give each character unexpected depth. Many of the characters make awful, questionable, or even bizarre choices, and although the other characters only spoke for about a chapter, their motives are explained and their personalities make so much more sense. Kara is given more depth as well from the epilogue in the beginning of the book- seeing how Kara ends up makes reading about her journey more interesting, and also makes it easier to see how her decisions effect her.

All that really needs to be said about Ballads of Suburbia is that it's spectacular, and that I can't recommend it enough.


*Thanks to Yan and Carol for setting this Traveling to Teens tour up and letting me be a part of it! :D And thanks to Stephanie and the people at MTV Books for the book.

Links: Stephanie's website/blog/twitter /Ballads of Suburbia Taffy

MTV Books/Paperback/$13.00/Amazon/B&N/Borders/IndieBound