Book Review of "Crank"

By Claire Tolan

February 24th, 2018 - Greenville, New York Arts and Culture

Crank by Ellen Hopkins is a novel about a girl named Kristina and her alter-ego, Bree. Kristina visits her father in Albuquerque for two weeks over the summer before starting her Junior year of High School. When she is at her dad’s, she meets a boy named Adam who is addicted to drugs and influences Kristina to try for herself. As a result, Kristina becomes addicted to not only drugs, but cigarettes and alcohol as well. Nevertheless, Kristina goes home with a serious addiction and struggles to fight it while trying to live life as a typical, normal teen.

The main characters in the novel are Kristina, Bree, Adam, Chase, and Brendan. The biggest struggle for Kristina was battling her addiction and her alter-ego, Bree. Kristina changed from being an average teen with good grades, friends, and relationships to being a girl who struggles with addiction and cannot trust those who she loves most.

I think that the theme of this story is the choices that you make can affect everything in your life, so make wise ones. Ellen Hopkins's writing style in the novel was very unique. She used a lot of parallel writing. For instance, one side of the page would have Kristina’s thoughts and actions and the other side would have Bree’s thoughts and actions. The mood of this book changes around a lot but overall the mood was depressing.

“I sat at the table, brain blank, head spinning, something sounded suspiciously liquidy whooshing between my ears, trying not to look like the space cadet I felt like, struggling.” (Page 327).