Addicting books are hard to come by, but when you pick up “Crank” by Ellen Hopkins, you are sucked into Kristina Snow’s journey with the Monster. Oddly enough, this book is a warning to curious teens that are considering trying hard drugs, and show readers how dangerous substances can turn anyone into an addict.

From page one, Hopkins explains in her acknowledgements that this story is loosely based on her daughter’s own experience with Meth addiction and the challenges her family had to face for over seven years throughout her daughter’s battle.

 The reader starts from the very beginning, right before Kristina dances with the Monster, as she leaves her family to visit her father for the summer. Kristina is a smart, artistic, straight-A student who never gets in trouble, but once she gets to her drug-addicted father’s apartment, she is thrust into a world that she can never fully escape.

Coming home after finding love, Kristina can’t focus on anything but how to get more. Bree, the girl Kristina becomes when she wants to be confident, wants to get high and have fun, wants the drug, and Kristina can’t control the urge until she finds Brendon, a cute lifeguard and drug dealer, who can score her an eight ball. Her life is changed after a night with him, and the reader wants her to come to terms with her problem, but addiction is a powerful thing, and Hopkins’ poetic format keeps the reader turning the pages, wanting to know what happens next.

“Crank” dives into the psyche of a drug addict, and shows what an addiction will make a person do, and how much it changes them. Once you get your hands on “Crank”, you will want to sink your teeth into the sequels: “Glass” and “Fall Out”. Let the addiction begin.