White Lines by Jennifer Banash

Goodreads Blurb

Seventeen-year-old Cat is living every teenager’s dream: she has her own apartment on the Lower East Side and at night she’s club kid royalty, guarding the velvet rope at some of the hottest clubs in the city. The night with its crazy, frenetic, high-inducing energy—the pulsing beat of the music, the radiant, joyful people and those seductive white lines that can ease all pain—is when Cat truly lives. But her daytime, when real life occurs, is more nightmare than dream. Having spent years suffering her mother’s emotional and physical abuse, and abandoned by her father, Cat is terrified and alone—unable to connect to anyone or anything. But when someone comes along who makes her want to truly live, she’ll need to summon the courage to confront her demons and take control of a life already spinning dangerously out of control. 

I never am good with gritty books, really. I honestly find it completely ridiculous how characters in these books run run away, do drugs, or just become antisocial because of their troubles. But then, I'm so young I barely know anything about real problems. I think this book made me rethink my stand on this. My thoughts on the ridiculousness, that is.

White Lines...it's one of those books that, while isn't literary-perfect, it still manages to pull on you somewhat. Cat's hasn't had the easiest life. Her mother abused her, her father doesn't seem to care, and she's practically alone in the world. All she knows now is partying, but how far is she willing to go for a little thrill that only holds empty promises?

I'll definitely give it to Banash, she knows how to capture the gritty world of downtown. Almost everything is messed up and throughout the book, things are just slowly, slowly, spiraling down for Cat. She's not a smart character and she copes with her problems in the worst ways possible. She's completely f*cked up, and she has her ups and downs. She's so shockingly real. She tries to cope, and tries to escape, and that's a bit familiar, isn't it? Giovanni, Alexa, everyone. They may not be model characters, but they were fleshed out well enough.

I almost never talk about the writing style, but I have to. It was just gorgeous. The prose told the story beautifully and it was easy to understand. It was stunning writing and I definitely love Jennifer Banash's style. There's just a certain feel to it that makes you fall in love.

The plot was slow at times, though, and I almost put it down maybe halfway in? It definitely got more interesting later on for me, and I was aching to know how this sad story would end. And...wow, did it end. It almost felt too...not fitting. How (SPOILER. SORT OF) everything just fell into a sort of happy ever after. (END)

The romance also seemed to come out of nowhere and didn't seem to really...advance the plot as much as I thought it should've. So there was that.

All in all, I'd recommend it for fans of historical fiction, especially Out of the Easy by Ruta Septys, or Wild Awake by Hilary T. Smith if you've had the luck of reading that early!

Pages: 304
Genre: Historical/Contemporary
Series: Stand alone
Publisher: Putnam Juvenile
Release Date: April 4, 2013
Rating: 3.5 -->4 stars