Junk-Melvin Burgess

This book has got such a good reputation, and i really wanted to read it. It sounded pretty harsh though, but everybody said that adds to it. I finally ordered a second-hand book off ebay and read it.
  The book is about Tar and Gemma, two runaway teens that fall in with the wrong people and end up addicted to heroin. Tar's dad used to beat him up and Gemma's parents 'ruined her life' Life on the streets is going okay for the pair together, until they meet Lily and Rob at a party. Lily is the strangest girl anyone has ever seen, and when she takes a liking to Gemma, she is thrilled. They move out of the squat they are living in and move in with them, little do they know they are entering a dangerous world of addiction.
   Tar and Gemma fall into the habit of it so easily, and they truly think there's nothing wrong with it, just fun. It changes them as people so much from the characters you knew at the start. It is sort of difficult to identify with becuase they change so rapidly and their situations are so far off from reality sitting in a warm, cosy room. This doesn't stop the enjoyment of the book though, it almost helps it, you just watch these people from far back, falling into drugs and struggling to get back out again.
  The very end of the book was what completed it for me, when yiu finally hear Tar's dad's point of view, all he has to say on everything he has done. And he tells you what drugs has done to Tar (he doesn't die) They change him so much, much more than you know, and the one thing that meant the world to him becomes insignificant, even if only for a while.
  This is a love story, set so far away from where most love stories are set. It's difficult to step away from the characters at the end of the book, whne they're journey has ended. It was DIFFERENT but I enjoyed it. Not for the faint-hearted though, quite harsh and blunt. It wouldn't be the same without it though.