Fallout by Ellen Hopkins

From Goodreads,

"Hunter. Autumn. Summer.
Different homes. Different guardians. Different last names.
Different lives.
But there is one person who binds them together.
Kristina.

Nineteen years after Kristina Snow met the monster---crank---her children are reeling from the consequences of her decisions. Instead of one big, happy family, they are a desperate tangle of scattered lives united by anger, doubt, and fear.

A predisposition to addiction and a sense of emptiness where a mother's love should be leads all three down the road of their mother's notorious legacy. Sex, drugs, alcohol, abuse---there is more of Kristina in her children than they would ever like to believe. But when the thread that ties them together brings them face-to-face, they'll discover something powerful in each other and in themselves---the trust, the hope, the courage to begin to break the cycle.

Fallout is bestselling author Ellen Hopkin's riveting conclusion to her trilogy begun by Crank and Glass. It is a revelation and a testament to the harsh reality that addiction is never just one person's problem."

Goodreads - Fallout

Awards and Nominations:

• Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Young Adult Fiction (2010)

I am so glad that I have finally finished the Crank series.  I think I expected Fallout to follow the storyline of Kristina, but that wasn't the case in this book.  Fallout tells the aftermath of Kristina's addiction through the eyes of three of her children.  The story alternates between Hunter, Summer, and Autumn and their struggle to find love and avoid the cycle of addiction. 

I struggled with this book at the beginning.  I found the alternating story lines difficult to keep up with and the connections weren't clear.  I was well into the middle of the book before I discovered Autumn and Summer's connections to Kristina.  I wish that that information had been shared at the beginning of their storyline.  I struggled to keep Summer and Autumn's stories separate because I felt that there were some similarities between the two.  Hunter was easy to keep separated due to his being a male and being raised by Kristina's parents.  The concept of having the three stories of the kids was a great idea, but it was not executed well.

I do however love that the final book was the story of Kristina's kids.  The reader was able to see the impacts of her doing drugs and how it has impacted their lives.  All of the kids at some point in the book faced the issue of addiction or of teenage troubles.  Hunter cheated and smoked weed, Autumn had sex and was possibly pregnant and was quickly gaining a drinking problem, and Summer had a boyfriend doing meth and ran away to be with him.  All of these kids had problems and I think it was directly connected to Kristina's addiction.  I think this book is a wonderful example of how your choices can affect others later down the road.  Many people don't see drugs and alcohol as being part of a cycle.  This book is a prime example of how you get sucked into the cycle and you have to fight to get out and stay out of it.  Unfortunately, these kids were having to constantly fight to avoid turning out like their mother. 

This book was large, and by large I mean over 600 pages.  It made it difficult to hold because it was so thick, but that's just a personal complaint.  The book was an interesting conclusion to the Crank series.  I would love to know what happened to the actual children and how their life has been changed forever by the monster.  I give this 3 stars.  The mixed story lines were complicated and the book was too long and dragged on forever.  If you've read the first or second book, then I recommend reading Fallout.