Crash Into Me by Albert Borris

Crash Into Me

Author:  Albert Borris

Genre:  YA

Publisher:  Simon Pulse

Date Published:  July 21st 2009

From Goodreads:

Owen, Frank, Audrey, and Jin-Ae have one thing in common: they all want to die. When they meet online after each attempts suicide and fails, the four teens make a deadly pact: they will escape together on a summer road trip to visit the sites of celebrity suicides...and at their final destination, they will all end their lives. As they drive cross-country, bonding over their dark impulses, sharing their deepest secrets and desires, living it up, hooking up, and becoming true friends, each must decide whether life is worth living--or if there's no turning back.

---

I’ve seen Crash into Me around the blogosphere quite a bit this year, so naturally I wanted to get my hands on a copy. Luckily I won a copy from StephtheBookworm (Thanks Steph). I started this late in the night and finished it around 3 am, it was that disturbing.

I didn’t love this book, but something about the darkness and morbid interest in dying and suicide had me reading till the end. I needed to know what happen to Owen, Frank, Audrey, and Jin-Ae. I kept on reading to get the end, basically. I had several problems with Crash Into Me, one of the problems was the characters. I never really understood them, I didn’t understand what had gotten them to the point that they were suicidal. Everything was so on the surface, if you can understand that. The main protagonist is Owen, and we don’t really find out what’s really going on with him until the end, and the shocker the author intended wasn’t really a shock. There was a lot of “I want to kill myself”, or something along those lines, but I didn’t want to be told that I wanted to understand why they were feeling that way. Another problem I had was the story seemed choppy to me, nothing really flowed. Along there road trip, abruptly Frank would decide go to a baseball game and then they were off to a baseball game. I don’t know, sometimes I was just like WTF!

What I did like about Crash Into Me is that it was about a serious issue in our young adults. The statistics of teenage suicidal are downright outrageous. We need to listen to our young, acknowledge their feelings. Anything that brings something has important as suicide to the forefront I feel needs to be read. I just wish the execution was better.

Overall, I’m glad I read Crash Into Me, even if it had flaws.