Smashed (review)

The summer before Katie's senior year, the year where she's supposed to earn her field hockey scholarship to college, she finds herself attracted to Alec. Though one of the school's jock bullies, Alec is kind to Katie, relating to her grief about her father's abandonment. Katie also deals with that pain the same way her negligent mother does, by drinking too much, and one night she and Alec are involved in a serious car accident. Alec lets people assume that he was driving, but soon he's using the secret truth to blackmail Katie into going further, physically, than she wants to. Both Katie's drinking problem and her problem with Alec spin out of control, and she has to come to terms with the drinking that is her fault, and the rape that isn't. Katie is a genuinely sympathetic and realistic character, and her relationship with her two best friends demonstrates that it can be difficult to help someone break out of a downward spiral, especially when helping feels like judging someone whose life is so much harder than yours to begin with. Luedeke takes Katie beyond crisis all the way through her painful emotional recovery, giving the narrative satisfying closure as a credible cautionary tale with cautious, but still plausible, hope in the end.