Young Adult
Pages: 368
Publisher: MTV books
Release date: July 21, 2009

There are so many ballads. Achy breaky country songs. Mournful pop songs. Then there’s the rare punk ballad, the ballad of suburbia: louder, faster, angrier . . . till it drowns out the silence.

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. . . .

Amidst 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.

This is hardcore. It tried to suck life out of me. Read it if you dare. This is the dark reality every teenage kid fears or faces. We all know drugs, but we see it as the enemy. It's hard to see it from the eyes of an insider. I'm glad this book is out there for teens to read, but be warned: it's not pretty or pink. Specially if you have had experiences with this.

With that said... dude! this woman is a genius! OMG! What an amazing book. The 'ballad' concept is mind-blowing. What a great theory. I believe it has changed the way I see the world. The way she writes it, as a song, is brilliant. The whole book, to me, is a work of art. Powerful is an understatement. It goes beyond limits and plays with your view of reality.

I liked the cover, definitely fitting. Even if the book is fiction; the characters are real people, who probably Stephanie never met- but I bet each of those stories are out there, exactly like she wrote it. And the writing and plot are the way they should be, as if Kara wrote it. This is one of those books that leaves a mark so I do recommend reading it, specially if you love music and books as much as I do.