Sunday, January 19, 2014

Tasha's Review: Fallout

Fallout (Crank #3) by Ellen Hopkins
Publication Date: September 14, 2010
Genre: YA Contemporary
Pages: 663



 
Summary
 
Hunter, Autumn, and Summer—three of Kristina Snow’s five children—live in different homes, with different guardians and different last names. They share only a predisposition for addiction and a host of troubled feelings toward the mother who barely knows them, a mother who has been riding with the monster, crank, for twenty years.
 
Hunter is nineteen, angry, getting by in college with a job at a radio station, a girlfriend he loves in the only way he knows how, and the occasional party. He's struggling to understand why his mother left him, when he unexpectedly meets his rapist father, and things get even more complicated. Autumn lives with her single aunt and alcoholic grandfather. When her aunt gets married, and the only family she’s ever known crumbles, Autumn’s compulsive habits lead her to drink. And the consequences of her decisions suggest that there’s more of Kristina in her than she’d like to believe. Summer doesn’t know about Hunter, Autumn, or their two youngest brothers, Donald and David. To her, family is only abuse at the hands of her father’s girlfriends and a slew of foster parents. Doubt and loneliness overwhelm her, and she, too, teeters on the edge of her mother’s notorious legacy. As each searches for real love and true family, they find themselves pulled toward the one person who links them together—Kristina, Bree, mother, addict. But it is in each other, and in themselves, that they find the trust, the courage, the hope to break the cycle.
 
Told in three voices and punctuated by news articles chronicling the family’s story, FALLOUT is the stunning conclusion to the trilogy begun by CRANK and GLASS, and a testament to the harsh reality that addiction is never just one person’s problem.


Fallout is the conclusion to the Crank trilogy, which also contained Crank and Glass. Though Crank is still my favorite, and the other two don't come close, Fallout is the second best of the series.

I found that a lot of things that I felt about the first two books I felt about Fallout. The writing and plot ere great. The ending was kind of heart breaking. And I like that the focus shifted from Kristina to her children. It was great seeing how the effects of her addiction trickled down to effect her children's lives. Add in the newspaper articles describing what happened to some side characters from the other books and you get a nice conclusion to the trilogy.

The book has three narrators: Hunter, Autumn, and Summer. My favorite was Hunter. That probably was because he had the most defined voice. Autumn and Summer blended together for most of the first half of the book. Once they found their separate voices they were a lot better. Nikki, Bryce, Kyle were good counterparts to their respective partners. Most of the adults just fit their roles and that was perfectly fine.

Overall, Fallout is a great book and a great conclusion to a great trilogy. I happily recommend this book  and this trilogy.

 

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