SAVING BECK

SAVING BECK

By Courtney Cole

This one is difficult for me to review without coming off as unfeeling and cynical, but here it is.

Natalie and Matt are the loving parents of three great children. Beck is the oldest of the three – a good student, a football star, and a loving son with a beautiful girlfriend. Life is great, practically perfect, and high school graduation is just around the corner. Then tragedy strikes in the form of a car accident in which Matt is killed and Beck is injured. Life isn’t so great anymore.

As Natalie spirals down into depression and starts relying on medication to help her get through the days without her husband, Beck is left to take care of his young brother and sister. Eventually, this takes a toll on the boy who is dealing with his own guilt and pain at the loss of his dad, and dependence on drugs enter his world as well.

The description of a parent’s fear when a child becomes addicted to hard drugs is illustrated well in the book. The panic of a phone call in the middle of the night, the sleepless nights when you don’t know where your child is or if he is even alive are all described here. Although I’m not personally familiar with the physical cravings of a drug abuser, I do think the author gave a very vivid account of what it’s like to inject heroin into a vein, and the constant need for more when the drug wears off.

What I didn’t care for in the book were that the younger children of the family, Devin and Annabelle, barely seemed to be affected by their father’s death, their mother’s deep depression and their brother’s disappearance and drug addiction. They’re hardly even characters in the story. To be fair, this is really Beck’s story, but the other kids seem to be coping just fine in the middle of chaos. They’re basically just props to illustrate how Beck was forced to compensate for Natalie’s dysfunction.

This story is heart-rending, but it had too many spiritual undercurrents for me. A mother’s desperate prayers for her son, fine. I get it. But then, gradually, “God” started popping up in too many conversations and thoughts. And then wow. The end of the book was WAY too woo-woo spirit-in-the-sky for me. I know many people will love this part of the story. It just wasn’t for me, but the author’s note at the end of the book captured me. THIS is what the story should have been. It was heartfelt, not fake. It was authentic, because she wrote about her son, a recovering addict. Her words about her real life situation tore into me as the book itself did not. I felt her pain and love for her son so clearly.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for an advance egalley proof of the book in exchange for my honest review.

Reviewed March 2018