REVIEW: Saving Beck by Courtney Cole

OUR REVIEW:

Saving Beck is not an easy read--it shows us a family in crisis as it grieves through the aftermath of one tragedy while confronting the tragedy of addiction. Courtney Cole shows us the ugliness, horror, and utter sadness that comes along with a family member being (or becoming) an addict and she doesn't try to pretty it up at all. Within the span of a few hundred pages and the course of a 24 hour period in the hospital, we discover how this particular family ended up in this place to begin with. It's hard, y'all. I kept feeling so helpless and frustrated as I read. I wanted to help this family--to put pause on it going further--to plunge them all in therapy, to take the secrets out of the dark and put them in the light, to somehow, someway put them all on a different path. But the truth of the matter is, is that this happens all too often, and having a family member in and out of rehab and another one come from a line of people with addictive personalities, I know that wishful thinking is just that and it takes a lot of variables to get addicts and families back on track. It's hard and it sometimes feels impossible--something this novel does a good job of acknowledging.

With our country in the throes of what I feel is a drug problem of epic and epidemic proportions, I think that this novel is something that is so important in the reading community. As anyone who follows Cole's career knows, she's speaking from experience and truth and it's those things that make this novel feel so real and so deeply sad and raw and honest. We need more of this, I think. We need the hard truths, the voices of experience--because this is just one of many stories of addiction and we need to see them all--and we need the absolute joy of hope that this novel ends with. 

Don't be afraid of Saving Beck. Read it. Absorb it. Talk about it. 

BUY IT here.

SYNOPSIS:

Reminiscent of the beloved novels by Mary Kubica and Jodi Picoult comes a chilling portrayal of a son’s addiction and its harrowing effects on both him and his mother from New York Times bestselling author Courtney Cole.

There comes a time when offering your life for your child’s doesn’t work, when you realize that it’ll never be enough. 

The cold needle in his warm vein was a welcome comfort to my son at first. But then it became the monster that kept us apart. 

Heroin lied, and my son believed. It took him to a world where the last year didn’t happen, to a place where his father was still alive. What Beck didn’t understand was that it couldn’t bring his father back from the dead. It couldn’t take away his pain, not permanently. 

You think it can’t happen to you, that your kids, your family, will never be in this situation. 
I thought that too. But you’re wrong. 

Step into our world, and see for yourself. 
Watch my golden boy become a slave to this raging epidemic. Watch me try and save him. 

Drug addiction comes with a price. 
Trust me, you’re not equipped to pay it. 

Don’t miss this heartwrenching, evocative, yet hopeful novel—it will leave you forever changed.