RX

A didactic tale draws attention to mixed messages about drugs. Desperate to succeed in school and get into a top-notch college, Thyme swipes a friend’s Ritalin. Soon she finds herself dealing stolen prescription drugs, though she rationalizes her behavior as helping the incorrectly diagnosed. Hypocrisy in Thyme’s life is rampant: Her parents feed her vitamins and pop illicit Xanax and OxyContin; her peers are medicated by their parents to treat everything from normal adolescent depression to mild aggression, while their zero-tolerance school fights street drugs. Though every character serves an educational point in this heavy-handed story, each is also a well-drawn and interesting character. Subtlety is completely absent; in one climactic scene, Thyme acknowledges her choice as if an author “had carefully defined it in neat writing on the wall, no subtlety or subtext.” Yet despite the unrelenting message of this unabashedly moralistic tale, its solid construction will keep the reader’s attention. If she trusted her readers a little more, Tracy could have made her point and created a better story, too. (Fiction. YA)