Clean by Juno Dawson

*I was sent a copy of Clean by Juno Dawson in exchange for an honest review*
Juno is one of my favourite authors. I adore her writing and her characters and the daring aspects to her work. She pushes the boundaries of YA and that’s so refreshing to read, and definitely something i think younger YA readers are owed.

I have been anticipating this novel for an incredibly long time. It has been talked about a lot online and when i finally got a copy for myself i had to start reading it straight away. I knew the story was based upon addiction and recovery and i knew the protagonists name, and that was it.

Straight away you are thrown in to the story in a similar way that Lexi is, and i found that to be the best way to suck you in to her story. You’re finding out everything when Lexi is, which makes it feel so much more real when Lexi’s reality is far from anything i have ever experienced.

Although it is set among the ‘rich kids’ and the famous in the world, the story felt incredibly real. The recovery centre that Lexi is based in although is incredibly fancy and expensive, felt real. It was the perfect mix of the reader day-dreaming a little about that kind of high end life style, and the raw reality of Lexi being an addict in recovery.

I’ve never read a book of this nature before, nothing about recovery or any form of addiction, however i loved the way Juno wrote it. It felt realistic and the scenes in which Lexi is in detox were incredibly uncomfortable and disturbing to read. The whole book read a little uncomfortable which i can only imagine is the process of detox and recovery.

There was enough drama in the novel to keep you interested too. I was picturing little drama due to the nature of the book, however everything that happened seemed so realistic to what could actually happen in these centres. I loved that.

I want to take a moment to mention the characters in this story. Lexi as a protagonist is very unreliable but also lovable. I think i ended up loving her a lot more than i was supposed to. The most important think about this book easily is that all the characters were pretty diverse. As an author who patrons diversity, i don’t know why i wasn’t expecting much diversity in there, but it was packed. All the characters that were involved in recovery, and the doctors at the centre were all in the LGBTQ spectrum or culturally diverse. I appreciated that the most about this book, it once again made it feel a little more realistic. I’m glad that diversity continued in to Lexi’s life outside the centre, it seemed to make sense in the world of the young and the rich in London.

Overall i loved this book. The ending lacked something for me i think but the rest of the story made up for it. I cannot wait to see what everyone thinks of this book, and it deserves all the recognition it gets. Clean is a little risky, sexy and most of all important for the changes in YA at the moment. I’m so glad that i loved this as much as i did.