A captivating and powerful exploration of the opioid crisis—the deadliest drug epidemic in American history—through the eyes of a college-bound softball star. Edgar Award-winning author Mindy McGinnis delivers a visceral and necessary novel about addiction, family, friendship, and hope. When a car crash sidelines Mickey just before softball season, she has to find a way to hold on to her spot as … to hold on to her spot as the catcher for a team expected to make a historic tournament run. Behind the plate is the only place she’s ever felt comfortable, and the painkillers she’s been prescribed can help her get there.
The pills do more than take away pain; they make her feel good.
With a new circle of friends—fellow injured athletes, others with just time to kill—Mickey finds peaceful acceptance, and people with whom words come easily, even if it is just the pills loosening her tongue.
But as the pressure to be Mickey Catalan heightens, her need increases, and it becomes less about pain and more about want, something that could send her spiraling out of control.
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This book was heavy but wonderful.
Watching Mickey repeatedly distance herself from her actions and, at the end of the novel, accepting that she is an addict was heartbreaking. The ending hit me like a truck, yet it felt hopeful.
However, I believe that the part that begins with finding the bodies (not a spoiler, foreshadowed on the first page) to the ending could’ve been expanded. The ending was super fast-paced compared to the relatively average pace of the rest of the novel. I felt like Mickey was in a whirlpool full of consequences and results and that she was an outsider looking into her own life. I would’ve appreciated the ending more if the 50 pages spent on it were expanded to 80 or so.
Heroine leaves the readers with several “what could’ve been’s” if Mickey didn’t become an addict, but concomitantly leaves us with even more “what will/can be’s.” I considerably enjoyed and appreciated this novel, and I predict I’ll still be thinking about Mickey’s universe for the next several weeks.
This is a powerful book about drug addiction from the perspective of the addict. Heroine chronicles the descent into taking drugs with the character Mickey Catalan. Mickey is the catcher for her small town’s incredible softball team. She and her friend, Carolina, who is the pitcher for the team, are in a car accident in the first chapter of the book. The crash tears Mickey’s hip out of socket and breaks Carolina’s wrist.
What follows is the painful recovery process. Mickey is determined to be well enough to play her final season, but she is in so much pain from the screws in her hip and the physical therapy that she starts to need her OxyContin prescription even more. The Oxy takes away all the pain and settles her in a cloud of warmth, but soon she needs to take more to get the same effect. But the prescription runs out too soon, and her doctor refuses to prescribe more. So Mickey starts to search for other ways to get her fix. And things soon start to spiral out of her control. Will she heal enough to play her final season? Or will she start to look for something stronger than Oxy to numb her pain?
This book was intense. Mickey’s pain bleeds through every page, and I’ve begun to understand the slippery slope that leads a person into the rabbit hole of drugs. The author does a brilliant job setting up the characters and their interactions, and Mickey is a great character to be with. The Oxy not only takes away her pain and makes her feel great, but it helps her to become more social. This double layer of what Mickey comes to describe as need is a great insight into why some people feel they need the drugs to function.
I would recommend this book to older teens and adults who have ever wondered what the allure of drugs might be to a person. If you have an addict that you know, this book might help to unravel some reasons as to why they became addicts. But as Mickey so adequately puts it when asked “Why you and not me?” the best answer is sometimes, “I don’t know.”
OH MY GOD. I beg you not to second guess this book.
This was such a hard hitting book. I cringed and cried and got mad at the main character. I wanted to shake her. The author did such an amazing job putting you in the story. Trigger warning for those with addiction issues, but I would recommend this.
Dark and brutal. Deals with the highly relevant and impactful topic of drug addiction and shows us nobody is immune.
Why I gave a book that enraged me 5 stars…..
Book synopsis: Heroine is the story of Mickey, a high school senior who is the girls’ softball team catcher. This year the team is planning on going all the way to winning the state championship, but when an automobile accident gets in the way of Mickey obtaining that goal, she does everything she can to fight back and be ready for the season. Mickey pushes herself to the brink to be strong enough to perform for opening day, but not without the help of the prescription pain medications she was given post operatively after the accident. Unfortunately, Mickey runs out of the medications, and without a doctor’s prescription, she is forced to find her much needed relief in less than conventional ways.
Review: Have you ever been angry at a book? I mean, so angry that you don’t have a clue what to write about it in your review? You WANT to write something, because it made you so mad, but you’re just at a loss for words. For someone who is rarely at a loss for words, that’s pretty darn significant.
Addiction has always frustrated me. I have always been torn as an RN, with my extensive ICU background and then with my personal experience with multiple back surgeries, I understand how people can become addicted to medications. But I still personally find it to be a choice. (And I will argue that point if challenged.)
Mickey’s story is a common one, and believe me, you get pulled right in to this novel from page one, and won’t want to put it down until you reach the end. The thing is, I reached the half way point and I was still so terribly frustrated. To me, from the nursing aspect, I felt like the author was almost making justifications or excuses through Mickey, saying that what she was doing was ok, that it was ok for her to continue to take these drugs. It was almost like she was glorifying or romanticizing the whole thing. When finally, after a doctor’s appointment Mickey realizes she is an addict, the tone of the book starts to change. It doesn’t happen immediately, but we see Mickey transition from denial to acceptance of her problem while at the same time watch everything rapidly start to fall apart around her. Once Mickey starts into recovery things start to move fairly quickly and I am happy with how they progressed. I found Devra’s role to be absolutely amazing here, but where her friends and team come into play, other than Nikki and Lydia at the end, I am shocked at the lack of support. I found this both very realistic yet discouraging at the same time.
Does this help addicts? Does reading about the types of feelings that Mickey is having throughout this experience verify that someone out there actually “understands” and “gets them” make addiction easier? Is this therapeutic? I suppose some people would say it does. I suppose it could be compared to reading about break-ups or rom-coms and connecting with the emotions those characters portray.
It’s the subject matter that frustrated me. There are things in life that make you feel emotions, and those emotions stick with you for a very long time. Joy. Happiness. Sadness. Fear. Anger. Disgust. Rage. Anything that can stir that much emotion in someone, deserves a good review, regardless of the subject matter or whether I agree or disagree with it. Emotion is powerful, it is what drives us, and it is necessary.
After I finished this book, I read the Author’s Note. I highly recommend you read it too. This was the best part of the book for me. That’s not to say this book wasn’t good. Truth be told I loved it. What Mindy McGinnis did with such an important and relevant topic was absolutely amazing. She made me mad, and that was good. I want everybody to read this book. I just want the YA community to take it for what it is, the story about one very lucky girl. Very lucky. The Author’s note is an easy explanation of how addiction can start, she nails it. Understand that it may only take one pill, but it’s always your choice to take that pill, as well as the next one, and the next.
4.5 Star’s…if you or someone you know has even been addicted to Oxy, Heroine or any other substance, you will relate to this book. Wow!
I could not put this book down! Such a mind blowing story about student athletes and how easily one becomes addicted to pain killers after an injury.
True-to-life and edge-of-your seat, Heroine gives the reader all the reasons, excuses, and rationalizations true addicts give to legitimize their drug use. Well-rounded characters and great use of foreshadowing and suspense made this un-put-downable. I can’t wait to read McGinnis’s other works.