Don't Do Drugs

Survive the Night by Danielle Vega

Saw this at Target last week for $5.50, read the blurb and thought "Why not?" Good call, but holy cow.

This was a fairly quick read. I say that because I read it in 5 1/2 hours. I was hoping for a different ending, but I'll survive.

Casey is recently home from rehab. Initially, she got addicted to pain pills after jacking up her knee in soccer. A misfit from school named Shana helped to lead her on this path. It started with the oxy, but also encompassed things like meth, heroin, and ecstasy. That's why she went to rehab, although she told people she had a bad reaction to the pain meds.

Anyway, she starts out at a slumber party with her friends from the soccer team, the ones who more or less abandoned her when she was injured, but Shana and her other friends show up and whisk her away to New York City. First, they go to an underaged club to watch Casey's ex-boyfriend perform with his band. While there, some freak invites them all to a Survive the Night rave in the tunnels. Shana decides that they need to go.

So they go. They group is Shana, Casey, their friends Aya and Julie, Casey's ex, Sam, and Sam's bandmate, Woody. They end up in this giant party underground in New York. Shana, being the unsavory character that she is, spikes Casey's drink, and Casey starts to see things. One of those things being a disemboweled Julie. When Casey gets back to the group, they go looking for Julie. They find her, but in a different area than where Casey originally sees her. Yes, she is dead and disemboweled.

They try to leave the tunnels because by this time, the rave has broken up and everyone has disappeared. Unfortunately, the manhole cover where they came in no longer opens. They're stuck. They get lost in the tunnels. They are attacked by rats. They trudge through waist high water. They are attacked by some monster with tentacles. Everyone except Casey dies. Because of this, I thought the whole book was a dream in rehab, but it wasn't. How much of this was real to her, we'll never know because they found ecstasy in her system, hence the title I gave this post.

Seriously, if you learn nothing from this book, I hope you get this out of it: don't do drugs, and watch who you trust. Perhaps if Casey hadn't been so trusting of her "friend" Shana, her life wouldn't have come to this.