Third Review - Tweaked

At-A-Glance

Title: Tweaked

Author: Katherine Holubitsky

First Copyright Date: 2008

Genre: Teen Fiction

General Subject Matter: Drug (crystal meth) abuse and addiction

Interesting Fact: White Pine award-winner

Price: $9.95 CDN, or borrow it from MW’s library!












Tweaked was not what I expected. It’s one of those books that you pick up and go “Oh that sounds interesting, emotional, and intense. I’m going to read it”. Then you read it and when you’re done you feel nothing. Where hard-hitting emotions should be, there aren’t. There were some good parts of the book, but it lacked the cruel sense of reality that comes with a topic as dangerous and real as crystal meth addiction.

Gordie Jessup is a good kid but he’s living in a nightmare. His older brother Chase is a crystal meth addict. His mom cries all the time and just can’t say no to Chase’s demands for money to get his next fix. His dad tries to help Chase but Chase doesn’t want any of it. Their family is going down the drain financially and emotionally. Gordie is fed up of the manipulation, the lies, and the stealing; but when Gordie decided to step in and help his brother, things go wrong.

I would not recommend this book to adults unless they want to frequently visit Urban Dictionary. There are a lot of slang words used periodically through Tweaked, and even I, a semi-social teenager, had to go look up a few words. Words like: bender, cranked, tweaked, rolled, shooting up, ice, and tracks. Not very pleasant definitions to be found in that list of words let me tell you. For the sake of the title, I will tell you what the definitions of tweaked is: to be really high on methamphetamine (meth). Oh! At one point in the story, Gordie was talking about how he is two UNITS behind in Chemistry. I didn’t know that other schools used units! Wow! Tweaked is written in first-person narrative; Gordie Jessup tells the story.

Let’s cut to the chase. There are a lot of big things I didn’t like about Tweaked. There were a lot of confusing flashbacks that I didn’t realize were flashbacks until I read a part that already happened. Then I had to go back a couple of pages and read it over knowing that it’s a flashback. There was really no sense of time. There were also a lot of sentences that were not properly worded and could easily confuse a reader, even a rabid reader like myself. I had to re-read sentences and paragraphs twice over before I understood what the author was trying to convey. There were two or three really intense scenes in the book, that if worded properly, would’ve made my cry for a very long time. But alas, not a tear was shed over Tweaked. You think I would cry, as I cry easily over books and movies (I am SO ashamed to say that), and also because it’s pretty heavy stuff I’m reading. But no, no salty drops of water ran down my cheeks, on the page, blurring words. By the time I got two -thirds of the way into the book, I was really just reading it because I wanted to find out what happens to Chase at the end, not because it was particularly interesting. Then when I reached the end,
there are SO MANY questions in my head that were left unanswered....important things, too! How did Chase even start doing drugs? Why? What happened to Ryan? Did the cops ever catch DC and Ratchet? What about Jade’s mom? Is she okay? It frustrates me that I will never know the answers to these questions. The storyline was not that well developed, and there weren’t any discernable climaxes.

There were three scenes in Tweaked that I did like. When Gordie entered a drug house to look for Chase, the way the scene was described that sent shivers down my spine. That scene was very, very well written. I would be scared out of my mind if I was Gordie, seeing bodies all over the floor passed out, people doing drugs right out in the open, others convulsing and seizing. Right after this scene, was another well-written scene. Gordie discovers that Chase, after promising to come clean, runs off. Gordie’s frustration being described makes me so frustrated that I sped up my reading because I couldn’t deal with it. The last scene was at the very end, and in that single half-page scene, the whole vicious cycle of crystal meth addictions was summed up, and stark realization hit me and made me think about how hard it is to come off an addiction, and what an amazing thing it is when someone does.

Overall, I’d rate this book a 6 out of 10. Tweaked could have been WAY better, but it wasn’t. Sadly, it fell short of my expectations, and maybe that’s my fault. Or maybe it’s just not a great book. Read it yourself and decide...and then come back and tell me what you think!


I will end this with a quote from the book, to give you an idea of what a crystal meth addict looks like:



Over the past two years, there have been many times what I have seen Chase like that. Hyped up, pupils flickering in his head like a pinball machine, skin yellow-gray, sores festering all over his face. Ready to fight anyone who comes near him because he’s suddenly got it in his head that everyone is out to get him: fists clenched, no muscle left in his 130-pound body; but every stringy sinew stretched taut.

Read the book. Tell me your reactions. Prove me wrong.



This is what Laura thinks:

I liked the book, I was able to get into the characters after a while, although it was really short and could have used some more building up to events. I felt that everything happened really fast, one second the brother who is supposed to be in rehab for 3 months is out in the next chapter, but overall I liked it.





Katherine Holubitsky was born in Toronto, Canada. She has won numerous awards over the past ten years, and written several critically-acclaimed teen fiction novels.
Find more about her and her books here: Katherine Holubitsky