REVIEW: Ballads of Suburbia by Stephanie Kuehnert

SYNOPSIS: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.

MY REVIEW: Ok,my return post had to be about this book! I have been tied down for the past few months,extremely exhausted but I couldn't help posting about this book just now.

Ballads of Suburbia is one of the best books I have read in recent times! The blurb doesn't do it much justice. The book is so much more than that. It speaks about the lives of kids,coming from varied pedigrees and family backgrounds,all residing in Oak Park and how situations and circumstances lead them to do drugs and bring them out of the habit or engulf them. It is a very compelling book that commands soul searching.

Though Kara is the protagonist the book also focuses on the lives of the friends Kara makes or breaks in her life. A most poignant book,Ballads Of Suburbia is sure to touch the heart and soul of any and every reader. Nothing censored or sweetened or sugar-coated,Ballads of Suburbia narrates the gruesome truth in raw words. Stephanie Kuehnert has done a stellar job with this book. The measured despair and saccharine melancholy of books dealing with similar subject finds a direct voice crying out loud in Ballads. Drug use and abuse is at the heart of the book. But it also accommodates within itself the lives of the residents and how families break,how the kids of broken families are affected and why they take up drugs. I loved the way the ballads of the drug-users are spread throughout the book. The stories give a serious jolt,a shake to wake up and view life and what is happening to life.

Stephanie Kuehnert in Ballads of Suburbia not only sketches in unadulterated words but also teaches us about life,love,family and friends-majorly about love and how a life without love can lead a person to commit heinous deeds worthy of self-devastation or even hell. This book is a must read people. If you haven't read it yet,please pick up a copy and read it! I am sure it will be an eye-opening experience for you. A compelling must-read!

MY RATING: 5/5