Out of Reach (review)

Rachel and her beloved older brother, Micah, have always been allies against their controlling, restrictive parents, so Rachel covered for Micah when he first started taking meth. Now that he's disappeared following an unsuccessful stint at rehab, she follows an elusive email to nearby Ocean Beach in San Diego to search for him, accompanied by Micah's friend Tyler. As Tyler and Rachel follow a series of dwindling leads (starting with the cryptic email that directed Rachel to Ocean Beach to begin with), they share bittersweet reminiscences of Micah and explore their own connection while delving deeper into the underworld of the drug culture. Arcos paints a complex, honest, devastating portrait of what it means to watch someone you love turn into a stranger; it's clear that Micah struggled for a long time before he turned to meth, but no single factor is blamed, and Arcos avoids both sensationalism and easy answers. This is Rachel's story, though, not Micah's, as she deals with her role as the "perfect" child (itself a lie), her growing connection to Tyler, her inherited family legacy of addiction and mental illness, and her grief and guilt over Micah. The result is an empathetic, highly readable tale that captures the messy dynamics of sibling relationships, the pain and powerlessness of addiction from a loved one's perspective, and, in an open ending that brilliantly mingles loss and hope, the necessity of letting go. Less didactic and more nuanced than Ellen Hopkins' Crank, this is a delicately written debut with considerable substance and wide appeal.