Descripción editorial
From the team that brought you the New York Times bestselling Dry comes a “gritty and unflinching” (Booklist) thriller that proves when gods play games, even love is a lie.
The freeway is coming.
It will cut the neighborhood in two. Construction has already started, pushing toward this corridor of condemned houses and cracked concrete with the momentum of the inevitable. Yet there you are, in the fifth house on the left, fighting for your life.
Ramey, I.
The victim of the bet between two manufactured gods: the seductive and lethal Roxy (Oxycontin), who is at the top of her game, and the smart, high-achieving Addison (Adderall), who is tired of being the helpful one, and longs for a more dangerous, less wholesome image. The wager—a contest to see who can bring their mark to “the Party” first—is a race to the bottom of a rave that has raged since the beginning of time. And you are only human, dazzled by the lights and music. Drawn by what the drugs offer—tempted to take that step past helpful to harmful…and the troubled places that lie beyond.
But there are two I. Rameys—Isaac, a soccer player thrown into Roxy’s orbit by a bad fall and a bad doctor and Ivy, his older sister, whose increasing frustration with her untreated ADHD leads her to renew her acquaintance with Addy.
Which one are you?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Through a high-concept thriller that looks into the opioid crisis, the previous father-son collaborators (Dry) follow two siblings at the center of a deadly wager between two drugs characterized as gods. Confident and alluring Adderall (Addi) and pompous but utilitarian Roxicodone (Roxy) each make a bet that they can get their victim to overdose before the other: blue-haired artist Ivy Ramey, 18, who is nearly failing senior year due to her untreated ADHD, and her charismatic, high-achieving younger brother, Isaac Ramey, a 17-year-old soccer player who dreams of being a propulsion engineer until an off-field injury changes everything. Though the reader knows that one sibling will end up in a body bag tagged "I. Ramey," the question of who will succumb pulls readers along. Throughout, perspectives shift between Addi, Roxy, and the siblings, giving insight into the motivations of two teens trying to do the best they can with what they have. The Shustermans' depiction of each sibling's spiral into dependence and misuse of prescribed medications sheds a critical light on the ongoing drug epidemic, subverting stereotypes about substance abuse while exploring each drug's potential to help and to hinder. Ages 14–up.
