Facing Demons

When I received “Facing Demons,” I was quite excited to read it. I have always been pretty interested in reading about people who have had to go to rehab and the stories behind them. Normally, you just hear about them as a statistic, but behind every number and every statistic, there is a real person and a real story. Although the first three or four pages seemed a little preachy, in the “don’t do drugs” sense, as soon as I got past the first few pages, and really got into the book, I was hooked! I was not able to put this book down (technically speaking, I was not able to put my i-pod touch down, since I was I was reading the e-book version)!

This book begins with a prologue, in which Blake Solomon, the man who runs the Anchor Beach Rehab clinic, is in the hospital with a boy from the clinic who doesn’t seem like he’s going to make it. Blake seems rather distraught, and in his mind, is transported to a different time and place in that hospital. That hospital is the place where Blake was cured of his cancer! The rest of the book is devoted to telling the stories of four of the residents of the Anchor Beach Rehab clinic. It talks about their issues with drugs, alcohol, child prostitution, self harm, gangs and other issues that many teenagers have to deal with.

This book was absolutely amazing. I definitely read it twice before I started writing this review! With every page I read, and every detail into someone’s story, I became more and more hooked on this book. I feel like anybody who reads it will be in the same boat as I was!
          
One thing that I really liked about “Facing Demons” was the dedication that the author made at the beginning of it. This book is dedicated to “those who deserve a second chance.”  I feel like that dedication was a perfect beginning to this book because all of the characters made a mistake and deserved the second chance that they were given.


Facing Demons
Ashley Sanders
Trafford Publishing (2011)
ISBN 9781426951701
Reviewed by Avni Gupta (age 17) for Reader Views (10/11)