100 Pages A Day...Stephanie's Book Reviews

" Don't let yourself get bored.  Exist to question, question your existence."

Brad Shepherd is a younger high school math teacher, who for all of his life has followed the rules and his parents wishes.  Suddenly, while in the middle of a lesson, one of his students passes out and dies from a drug overdose.  The school-board, not wanting any trouble, offers Brad a nice package to leave.  Brad takes his package and runs away to a small summer-vacation island in Put-in-Bay, Ohio.  There he meets up with a menagerie of friends, Haley, Cinch, Birch and Astrid.  Brad picks up a job as a bouncer at one of his friends bars and quickly falls into the party scene, drugs, more drugs and even harder drugs and women (and other lovers).  Trying to erase from his mind the school tragedy,Brad may just create more problems for himself. 

This is a modern-day coming of age story for adults; adults that have succeeded in the eyes of society, but still feel like something is missing, that all that they were promised is not present. Being the same age as Brad in this story, I can relate.  Though I haven't quite gone through a tragedy like his and hopefully would not fall into sex, drugs and alcohol to fix it; Brad's struggle with finding what he wants to do in life still resonates for my age group.  I felt particularly bad for Brad's character when the school so quickly pushed him out of his job since he was a younger, non-tenured teacher and the issue would be more easily fixed by letting him go then trying to deal with whatever mess was left in it's wake.  The setting and eternal-summer type atmosphere of Put-in-Bay is a great setting for Brad's raucous quarter-life-crisis and subsequent recovery.  With great descriptions, I could easily picture this small island town and feel the atmosphere of the party life.  Even though, Brad's fall was a hard one, he eventually learns that he is "drowning in a worse reality than the one I was trying to escape."

This can be my book featuring recovery for Spring Bookish Bingo!