Review: CLEAN by Juno Dawson

Clean by Juno Dawson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When socialite Lexi Volkov almost overdoses, she thinks she's hit rock bottom. She's wrong.

Because rock bottom is when she's forced into an exclusive rehab facility.

From there, the only way is up for Lexi and her fellow inmates, including the mysterious Brady.

As she faces her demons, Lexi realises love is the most powerful drug of all ... 

It's a dirty business getting clean.

—
I started reading CLEAN by Juno Dawson, not really knowing what to expect. And at first, I found it a bit intimidating—which is a sign of good writing, for me, as I was so overwhelmed by Lexi’s life and felt really uneasy. And I totally get that that’s the point of the writing there. It’s dark, gritty, and disturbing in more than one place.

Lexi is a wealthy seventeen year old with a drug problem. CLEAN follows her on her many ups and downs as she goes to the Clarity Centre for rehab.

One of the things I really appreciated about this YA novel is that it doesn’t shy away from dark topics that some might argue aren’t appropriate for YA readers. There’s drugs, addiction, sex, death, grief. And it’s all handled really well and in a respectful manner. Even when Lexi (when in withdrawal from heroin) insults one of the nurses, using a homophobic slur, she does call herself out on it when she’s clean and apologise to the nurse herself.

The diversity of the characters is great too. There are many characters of colour who are central to the book (such as Saif, Sasha, and Ruby), characters with different religious identities, and LGBTQ+ characters (Kendall is trans, at least two nurses are gay, and one of Lexi’s school friends is shown in a “sexually fluid” relationship) and the best thing about all of these diversities is it’s all treated so normally! It’s not pointed out as being “different” which is what I’ve seen in a few other YA novels unfortunately (or sometimes it feels like these characters have only been put in the book for the sake of diversity—not the case here). These characters’ ethnicities/genders/religions/sexual identities are NOT shown to be their only defining feature as in some other books I’ve read and—no, they’re fully developed, treated like everyone else (as they should be!), and as far as I could see, Dawson doesn’t fall into any stereotypes. This, for me, really made this book a good read and I’ll be highly recommending it.

In a book about addiction and recovery, it was obvious mental illness rep was going to be a big part of it, and I was pleased to see a large number of mental illnesses (addiction, anxiety, OCD, anorexia and other eating disorders, etc) examined; seeing them through Lexi’s eyes was also interesting, particularly how her thoughts on the others changed during her journey in recovery.

 However there were a few things that felt unrealistic, particularly in the treatment of anorexia: I doubted that nurses really wouldn’t be aware of Kendall’s nighttime exercise and when she was so underweight, why wasn’t she using a wheelchair? I was also surprised that the staff didn’t intervene in the water fight when Kendall joined in, chasing the others. Also, surely on an island, there’d be more staff watching the beach and the hotel in general. Why didn’t anyone but Lexi notice when Saif was high?

The romance, for me, built a little quickly and it felt a little like insta-love. But I totally get that that’s because of the vulnerable places both Lexi and Brady are in. It may feel a little fast, but it’s believable and realistic to Lexi’s situation. I guess it’s just my personal preferences that prevented me from really “feeling” the love between these two characters as I prefer more of a build-up.

While this is a solid 4 stars, what stopped me from upping it to 5 is the writing. For me, it would have been nice to have a little more imagery in it at times—possibly in the vein of WINTERGIRLS by Laurie Halse Anderson (which looks at anorexia) or THICKER THAN WATER by Kelly Fiore (also about addiction). For me, those two books used dark, disturbing imagery to really heighten the grittiness of the story, and I think if this book had had a little of that it would’ve truly made it a haunting story in places. As I was reading, I just wanted something more from the writing itself.

However, CLEAN does give us a very strong narrating voice and so I do realise that some more imagery may have lessened the impact of Lexi’s narrative had that been the case! So again this is probably just personal preference as I’m a sucker for imagery!

Overall, this is an important read. Highly recommended.

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