After adoring Trouble the Saints and really becoming immersed in Alaya Dawn Johnson’s writing style, I had high hopes for Love is the Drug. I think these two books are good examples of how intended audience and experience in the field makes a difference in quality. While Trouble the Saints was a beautifully written book with intriguing characters and settings, Love is the Drug (published several years earlier) fumbles for balance and fails to hold the reader. It’s not all bad, but it did not meet expectations.

Love is the Drug succeeds in concept. While I’m still not sure if this book is about love, conspiracy, or personal growth, the external emergency is interesting. Love is the Drug‘s shows us a world where a pandemic has broken out but Washington is quarantined and only the important government people and their children have been vaccinated. All of this happens in a very shady way that is generally unknown to the students, like our protagonist Emily Bird, and hidden from the rest of the country. This storyline is especially interesting because of the recent pandemic, it’s a glimpse of how things might have been in a parallel universe. Fortunately, we know the American government didn’t secretly vaccinate because at the onset it refused to take the pandemic seriously and all sorts of government officials from the top down have had COVID. It’s still an interesting story, part dystopia-potential, part conspiracy theory.

That’s where the good stuff ends. Early on, we meet a man named Roosevelt who is convinced Bird knows something she shouldn’t, and we spend the entire book dancing around what that may be. The question persistently does not get answered through the novel… to the point where, as I reader, I stopped caring and really just wanted to move on to something else. We’d often step off the path and dive into a love story that… didn’t make sense. The romantic moments were written well, but the progression of the relationship was clunky. They went from friendly acquaintances to “I’ll cook your Thanksgiving turkey” real fast. Literal turkey, not innuendo! … All these things together and the deflated ending left me underwhelmed about Love is the Drug.

We won’t talk about the incredibly tacky title. Just calling it out.

From a technical perspective, the thing that bothered me the most was the excess of dialogue. We learned most about external forces and our setting through conversations Bird has with others. Often times, these scenes are as awkward as her just walking into a room to have a conversation that provides information and no other purpose. It’s information dropping, sure, but it also created a lack of atmosphere. This is a particular pet peeve for me in book, and it ruined my experience as much as the directionlessness.

Overall… I don’t recommend Love is the Drug. I appreciate that it was a good idea, but the execution didn’t work for me. I would like to think that this is not representative of Alaya Dawn Johnson’s work, as her novel Trouble the Saints was very good. ( )

RGG: Not fast-paced, but is the meandering unfolding of the forgotten memories more a la Jellicoe Road? Despite the privileged socio-economic status of most of the characters, the multi-ethnic and gay characters provides diversity. Reading Interest: 14-YA.

This book isn't perfect, but I enjoyed it tremendously. It has so much going on, in a believable chaos of everyday life and international crisis. All the usually crushing pressures of Bird's life - the microaggressions of her fellow students, her fraught relationship with her family, the burning questions of who she really is - meet all the thorny issues of the modern world: climate change, food security, mutating pandemics. The tapestry woven is tight with tensions of many kind - romantic, mysterious, demanding. And it hits in many ways one of the key realisations of growing up: adults don't necessarily have their shit together any more than teens do.

The strong backbone of this for me was Bird's journey to a version of herself she could live with. It is not a happy, gentle progress. Every step leaves scars; every step is necessary. It's hard fought and brutal, and it made me want to cheer out loud. ( )

I still think Johnson has a little more polish/maturation to do as a writer, but this one was stronger than The Summer Prince. ( )

Rounding down to 3.75. Beautifully written, but it took me longer to read it than it probably should have. The tension between Bird and her mother was palpable. Bird's internal struggles with herself, too, were sometimes almost unbearable. ( )