Review: Fallout by Ellen Hopkins

Oct 23, 2010 by shanyn

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Title: Fallout (Crank #3)
Hardcover, 665 pages
Author: Ellen Hopkins
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry
Publication Date: September 14, 2010
Source: Publisher

Book Summary:
Hunter, Autumn, and Summer—three of Kristina Snow’s five children—live in different homes, with different guardians and different last names. They share only a predisposition for addiction and a host of troubled feelings toward the mother who barely knows them, a mother who has been riding with the monster, crank, for twenty years.

Hunter is nineteen, angry, getting by in college with a job at a radio station, a girlfriend he loves in the only way he knows how, and the occasional party. He’s struggling to understand why his mother left him, when he unexpectedly meets his rapist father, and things get even more complicated. Autumn lives with her single aunt and alcoholic grandfather. When her aunt gets married, and the only family she’s ever known crumbles, Autumn’s compulsive habits lead her to drink. And the consequences of her decisions suggest that there’s more of Kristina in her than she’d like to believe. Summer doesn’t know about Hunter, Autumn, or their two youngest brothers, Donald and David. To her, family is only abuse at the hands of her father’s girlfriends and a slew of foster parents. Doubt and loneliness overwhelm her, and she, too, teeters on the edge of her mother’s notorious legacy. As each searches for real love and true family, they find themselves pulled toward the one person who links them together—Kristina, Bree, mother, addict. But it is in each other, and in themselves, that they find the trust, the courage, the hope to break the cycle.

Told in three voices and punctuated by news articles chronicling the family’s story, FALLOUT is the stunning conclusion to the trilogy begun by CRANK and GLASS, and a testament to the harsh reality that addiction is never just one person’s problem.

Review:
Most of the Ellen Hopkins books are stand alones that deal with one topic – Burned, Tricks, Identical, Impulse. There are, however, a set of three books written by this excellent author that are to be read in sequence.

Fallout is the third in the Crank series, with the first two being Crank and Glass. The stories are based on Ellen Hopkins’ daughter and her life as it is altered by cocaine and other drugs.

Many who read the work of Ellen Hopkins will start with Crank, but I’m not sure how many follow up with Glass (and now with Fallout) – but I’m here to tell you that you should.

Fallout deals with the children of Kristina (the main character of Crank and Glass). Because she had multiple children, Fallout is from multiple viewpoints, since all of the children are in different situations and have been affected differently, depending on when in Kristina’s life they were born. This pulls all three books together beautifully and allows you to see the full circle of the effects of drug addiction, especially on families.

Crank, Glass, and Fallout are different for me than Hopkins other books because I got very invested in the characters since the books were published over a timespan. Also knowing that Hopkins based these books on her daughter’s life makes them hit a little harder – especially when you read updates on “Kristina” from Ellen or study the family tree she has posted on her website.

I think that Burned remains my favorite Hopkins book, but this trilogy is also one I would recommend.