Forever Yours (Grand Central Publishing),
October 13, 2015.
Three Stars
Addicted takes a somewhat silly premise, combined with a gimmicky
plot, and uses it to make a serious comment on addiction as mental illness. As
you can imagine, parts were successful, while others were not. The characters
often slipped into clichés, without enough background information to make me
really believe or understand their addictions. However, the story was funny and
sometimes clever, and the commentary on addiction did ring true at times.
While the plot was kind of
meandering with lots of loose ends, the novel was really focused on character.
Liam, the sex addict, was described as so ridiculously perfect that it was hard
to believe. We are told that he is so attractive and amazing, but to me he came
across as slimy and really just a creep. Maybe I just don’t have much empathy
for a gorgeous, wealthy, rockstar/chef who is cursed with having sex with
equally gorgeous women. I also felt that Liam’s addiction was trivialized,
while Mischa’s was treated with more care.
Mischa is a food addict who uses
calorie counting and binge eating to control her feelings. She is studying to
be a nutritionist, while working on a juice cleanse plan for her thesis – but in
spite of all this food-related knowledge, she treats her own body with little
respect. Her internal voice became boring and repetitive as we were forced to
listen to her tedious descriptions of food. However, her addiction still felt
much more realistic than Liam’s. I also appreciated the use of Cecile, the
young daughter of Mischa’s landlord, as she becomes the voice of Mischa’s
addiction. Mischa reflects that Cecile’s “blatant, adolescent
self-consciousness is a good reminder that my inner voice too often sounded
like hers: self-hating, judgemental, joyless.” (Loc. 1467) It is only when
Mischa can find joy in food – and more importantly, in life – that she can stop
hating her body.
Aside from Mischa and Liam, the
minor characters were mostly underdeveloped and often unnecessary. Mischa has a
best friend to talk to so that her whole story won’t be inner monologue, but
she never felt like a real person. Likewise, there are threads of a love story
that were so random and pointless, I didn’t see what they added to the story aside
from Mischa trying to make Liam jealous. Mischa is addictive and self-absorbed
with men as well as food, and she could only become a strong individual when
she gave up both addictions. Because of this, Addicted was not a traditional love story, but the author tried to
force it into one, which made it less enjoyable for me.
I received this book for free from Forever Yours (Grand Central Publishing)
and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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