Title: Broken Melody
Author: Nikki Haase
Genre: YA Contemporary
Format: eARC
Length: 301 pages
Publisher: Self-Published
Release Date: July 19, 2020

Drug Abuse, Threats on a Life

Bipolar Disorder

Book was found and reviewed via Reedsy Discovery.

Disclaimer: I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to Reedsy Discovery and Nikki Haase for this free copy. All quotes in this review are taken from the Advanced Reader Copy and may change in final publication.

Broken Melody deals with the very real world of drug abuse and addiction, and the costs that comes from the struggle of sobriety and relapse in a young woman.

Recent high school graduate Alana is struggling with her drug addiction to cocaine. Despite being a stellar student and previously able to balance her addiction with the rest of her responsibilities, being out of the confines of school has given her more freedom to do more drugs when she likes. As the drugs start to take over her life, her loved ones urge her to go to rehab to help her detox, and get back to being the person that they know and love. However, being on cocaine for years is not an easy thing to break.

Alana’s reasoning for resorting to cocaine is to help her deal with her bipolar disorder, saying that the drugs help her with the mood swings. She says that she has been self-medicating since she was a kid, so the many years of being on such a hard drug is long. She has already learned how to hide the fact that she’s addicted, and if one were to see how her life was progressing, one would have never thought something was amiss. But now, since she doesn’t seem to have a need to hide it, her family, friends, and girlfriend want her to get help. It even gets to a point where Alana brings shady people into her life that wouldn’t care whether she lived or died.

Haase’s exploration into addiction, recovery, and relapse was a difficult one to see. As I can’t speak to the representation of whether or not the depictions of drug abuse, drug addiction, and bipolar disorder are done correctly, I can only say that it is here. I hope that there will be more people that have experience in either of these can read this and attest to the authenticity of the representation.

In other aspects, the writing style and the prose was easy to follow, and one that I could read in future books from Haase. I am curious to see what is coming next from Haase, and what other kinds of topics she will explore in future books.