Teen Tuesday and Audiobook Review: Roxy by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman

Image: Simon & Schuster

Roxy by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman. Unabridged e-audiobook, ~11 hours. Read by Michael Crouch, Megan Tusing, Shaun Taylor-Corbett, Candace Thaxton. Simon & Schuster Audio, November, 2021. 9781797133416. (Review of e-audio borrowed from the public library.)

Teen Tuesday features a thriller/ allegory by the father-son writing team that brought us Dry. In their latest collaboration, entitled Roxy inspired by the opioid crisis, they personify the drugs, Oxycontin and Adderall, two medications that can be therapeutic, but also are also addictive. The multiple perspectives shift between Roxy and Addison in the first-person and siblings Isaac and Ivy in the third. The reader knows that one of the siblings will die from page one. Then, the story flashes back to several months earlier. Isaac injures himself in a scuffle with her drug-dealing boyfriend while retrieving his hard-partying sister, Ivy from a party. He's an honor student and athlete with hopes to earn a soccer scholarship to college. He has to play through his injury, so his nana gives him one of her pain pills. It works, and Isaac is able to play. Meanwhile, Ivy decides to buckle down and catch up with her schoolwork, so she agrees to take Adderall for her ADHD. The results are remarkable. She's able to focus and stay on task.

Roxy and Addison have other plans for the pair though. They make a friendly wager to see who will be the first to bring their plus-ones to the "party," where they will be tempted by stronger substances. Suspense builds as Isaac becomes dependent on Roxy and Ivy seems to turn her life around.

This character-driven novel is fast-paced and raw. The narrative style of each reader is pitch perfect. Mature teen readers, especially fans of Dry, will marvel at the world the Misters Shusterman have created-one in which good people make bad choices.