#33/130 - Sin & Salvation by K.F. Breene
The final installment in an fantasy-romance series set in a world where all manner of magical creatures, from the spawn of the Greek gods to kraken and djinn, are not only real but living among humans in cities they've established as strongholds and safe havens for magical beings, I have been waiting for this one for a long time after really enjoying the first two. Unlike a lot of series, I found the second book more enjoyable than the first and the third continued that trend. The shift in action away from the romance, which though still an element isn't as much the focus as in the first book, and toward a truly epic adventure/fantasy showdown make it a very quick read that I didn't want to put down because I had to know what comes next.
#34 - Tweak: Growing up on Methamphetamines by Nic Sheff
I read Beautiful Boy, written by Sheff's father, last year when it was all over the book pages and NPR ahead of the movie release, and I've been waiting for this one to become available on one of my e-readers for a long time because I really wanted to hear the story from the other side. I wasn't disappointed. An unflinching, almost confessional memoir about life in the grips of addiction, I found this book to be incredibly compelling, impossible to put down, and, as the sister of an addict who lost his battle, extremely hard to read. Sheff's honesty is both admirable and repellent, and at times it is easier to empathize with his family's anger and disappointment than with his own struggles against his inner demons. And although he gets clean in the end, his story is a deeply discouraging one for anyone who has ever loved an addict... because it reveals that even with all the resources in the world, parents willing and able to pay for one expensive rehab stay after another, sobriety is a steeply uphill battle. It makes one wonder if addicts without his resources and advantages stand a chance at all, or if they're destined to end up like my brother, dead of a relapse while waiting for an appointment in an overburdened system.