Book review: All Fall Down

Title: All Fall Down
Author: Jennifer Weiner
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Summary: Allison has it all--a beautiful house in the suburbs, a beautiful little girl, and a flourishing career as a blogger. Despite this "perfect" life, she's not as happy as things appear.  For one, her marriage is struggling--her husband sleeps in the spare bedroom and Allison is starting to suspect he's having an affair, or close to having an affair.  Also, her dad just got diagnosed with Alzheimer's.  Holding it together for the perfect life is really stressful. Fortunately she has her friends Oxy, Vicodin, and Percocet to help her out.

Review:  I listened to this book on CD in my car.  This book is stressful at times, probably because this woman's life so closely resembled my own.  Also, the daughter's voice was really whiny.

As many women out there know, life is overwhelming sometimes--kids, job, husband, and everything else--it can be a LOT to manage.  As I listened to this story (and as I listen now to my own whiny children and can't they just give me 10 minutes to finish this long overdue post?), I couldn't help but think, "wow, this could be me".  And if this is why people become addicted to pain killers, I can totally see why.  There's so much to do in so little time, it's great to have something to take the edge off and relieve some of that stress so you don't have to worry so much.  Unfortunately it can get expensive, especially when you have to seek out illegal ways to get it once you get cut off from your docs.

While this story hit close to home, I love a good addiction story.  One of my favorite shows used to be Intervention.  Once I had kids I had a hard time watching the ones with the younger addicts--those broke my heart--but it was fascinating to watch Allison's spiral into addiction and her subsequent attempt at recovery.

This was one of those books where as I went through each CD I got a little sad that I was one CD closer to the end of the book.  Despite how stressful it was to feel like I was listening to my life, I didn't want this story to end.  Highly recommended.