Little Pills Review

Title: Little Pills
Author: Melody Dodds
Genre: Poetry, Contemporary, Verse Novel
Triggers: Addiction, drug addiction
Rating: 4 Stars
Release Date: April 2, 2019

Synopsis

Seventeen-year-old Charlotte Navarro never asked to be anyone's hero. If you're a hero, your sister isn't supposed to hate you. And you're definitely not supposed to get hooked on Gramma's painkillers. Even so, Charlotte's sister's friend Mia looks at her like she's some sort of hero. As Charlotte starts taking pills more and more, she has to question how it could hurt herself and others, even Mia. Is it a harmless habit or a dangerous addiction?

Review

A special thank you to Netgalley and West 44 books for providing a free advance digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

This verse novel follows Charlotte. One thing I find interesting in verse novels is that the plot can be a lot more relaxed, more about capturing moments in time and experiences. This is a perfect example of this collection of poetry that pieces experiences together to form a plot. The poems included were really good and enjoyable to read because of this focus on the form of the poems.

I loved how slowly everything is introduced and explained how it goes on. The moments in time captured from Charlotte's point of view and emotions were really cool, especially because there are things that she doesn't fully understand, like why her sister doesn't get along with her anymore and a few other things. Her relationship with other characters were really interesting, especially with her older brother who while technically not there places a very important role within the context of the story. All of the characters had positive characteristics and flaws and while darker in subject matter than what I typically read, I enjoyed how real everything felt.

The ending was more open ended than I typically enjoy but it was really well done and powerful. While it hints at what happens next, it is really cool how the book is both a beginning and an end of Charlotte's story, and also some place in the middle. It's definitely not happy but I still enjoyed these aspects of the book.

This may have been partially because some of the lines were cut off on my eARC edition, but I think that there was more to it. I just got a little lost relating to what was going on and had to backtrack at times. Like I said, some lines were cut off on my copy so this may be partially responsible, but this is something to keep an eye out for. I had to keep backtracking and rereading.

All in all, I really enjoyed this verse novel. If you like verse novels, then this is definitely a worthwhile read. It is very much entrenched in poetry and the format of a verse novel so if you typically dislike verse novels, then this is not the thing for you. I personally loved it and the last poem gave me chills because holy crap.


I typically don't read books where the main character has an addiction, but this one was really good. What do you think about books like these?

In the next week, I plan posting a quarterly wrap up because we've made it through the first three months of the year! I wanted to do monthly wrap ups but geez that's a lot of posts and this works best for my schedule. If you have a blog, what do you do?

Thanks for reading!
Alyssa