At first glance, You’d Be Home Now is a book about a girl struggling to come to terms with her current reality. Emmy seems like your typical teen girl, but she’s been going through some rough stuff lately, starting with the night she and her brother were at a party and got in a car crash on their way home–a horrible crash that took the life of one of her classmates and revealed that her brother Joey was addicted to drugs.

Several months later, Joey is just getting home from rehab and trying to start fresh, but imagine being the cause of an innocent teenager’s death and being addicted to drugs to boot. Imagine being his sister and trying to move on but going to the same old school where you are whispered about behind your back and yelled at to your face. Sounds like a nightmare, right? As if all of that weren’t enough, Emmy’s mom is looking to sell some land and is getting backlash from the community about who she might be planning to sell it to. Needless to say, Emmy doesn’t always get very sound sleep.

Sleepless nights aren’t as bad when the neighbor boy who usually ignores Emmy starts to text her late at night. Texting leads to sneaking out to meet him, and soon Emmy is in a relationship. Or at least, she thinks she is. Things with the boy next door continue to heat up, but only under cover of night, otherwise he wants nothing to do with her. If Emmy wasn’t already questioning who she is, she certainly is now. How many secrets is she willing to keep? And at what expense? Because something is definitely going on again with her brother and Emmy is afraid it might be drugs.

Whether or not you have personal experience with a loved one addicted to drugs, this is a book that is both entertaining and touching. You’d Be Home Now seems like a very realistic portrayal of how addiction affects the family as a whole, and how some decisions can’t be reversed.

Review of a Digital Advance Reading Copy

This book was sent to Compass Book Ratings for review by Delacorte Press

Content Analysis:

Profanity/Language:  38 religious exclamations; 27 mild obscenities; 1 religious profanity; 7 derogatory names; 20 scatological words; 6 anatomical terms; 7 F-Word derivatives. 

Violence/Gore:  A brief scene occurs where minors are in a bad car crash that results in one casualty and multiple injuries; a girl recalls a time when her brother and his friend decided to jump off of a roof and into a pool but one of them didn’t make it into the pool and landed on concrete, resulting in a minor injury; a minor recalls the car crash that killed her classmate and how horrible it was, some blood is mentioned; a minor is mentioned to have almost died from an overdose; a girl has a dream about a car accident she was in, some blood is mentioned; a mention is made of the injuries that several minors sustained in a car crash; two boys get in a fight in a brief scene, one of them ends up with a broken arm; bullying is mentioned to occur several times. 

Sex/Nudity:  A minor is mentioned to hook up with the boy next door; a girl realizes she wants a boy to kiss her; a girl mentions that she and a boy do “everything but have sex-sex”; condoms not always being reliable is mentioned in a brief scene; a boy and girl embrace and the boy kisses her neck; a girl observes a boy swimming and thinks about how she has seen parts of him without clothes on but not in daylight; a few brief scenes occur in school where students discuss not wanting to read certain books because of their controversial sexual content; a girl is referred to as sexy; minors kiss in a brief scene; sexual activity is referred to in a brief scene; a conversation occurs where physical and outward appearance is compared to what is on the inside; a brief scene occurs where a minor girl and boy who live next door to each other text each other and both undress in front of their windows, the girl consents to the boy taking a few pictures, later the girl has a conversation about this activity with her sister and mentions that they don’t take off their underwear, but some masturbation is implied; the pictures that the boy took of the neighbor girl are leaked to other kids at their school and the girl doesn’t want to address what happened with her parents.

Mature Subject Matter:

Shoplifting; death; substance addictions; suicide; missing persons; parental abandonment; houselessness.

Alcohol / Drug Use:

A minor is mentioned to have heroin in his system; a minor is mentioned to be at a rehab facility; a minor is mentioned to probably be drunk; a character refers to someone as “just another druggie loser”; a bong and weed are mentioned; drug use is mentioned and marijuana is referred to as “just pot”; minors are depicted at a party drinking and smoking; a character becomes aware that her brother is using drugs and has overdosed; a character asks their brother if someone asked them to get high; an adult parent pours themselves a glass of wine; a minor is given a set of rules for living in his parents’ house which include no drinking and no drugs; a minor mentions that he was high; a minor is picked up by the police because he was found getting high; parents are mentioned to drink wine and other alcoholic beverages; houseless people are depicted smoking and needles are mentioned to be seen on the ground.