You'd Be Home Now by Kathleen Glasgow: Worth it?

You'd Be Home Now by Kathleen Glasgow: Worth it?

By Haylee Crapo

Kathleen Glasgow, known for writing dark and depressing stories (like her popular work Girl in Pieces) also wrote this novel about another teenage girl whose life is falling apart. It handles topics like drug abuse and family tension, but…is it actually any good? My answer to that is no. No it is not.

You’d be Home Now is a story about a girl named Emory, who was in a severe car accident during the summer–one that injured her, killed her friend, and revealed that her brother had been doing drugs for a while. The novel starts in the aftermath of the crash; her recovery, and her brother coming home from rehab. Once the school year starts, everything goes downhill for Emory: she finds out that her crush is only using her for her looks, her friends have all abandoned her, and she feels that she has to care for her brother as if she is his caretaker. With the risk of her brother relapsing and her family and social life falling apart, Emory must keep her sanity together and keep moving forward, even if she feels like she can't.

Okay. Seriously, I wanted to put down this book so many times when I was reading it. So many times. The only reason I didn’t was because I loved one singular background character, and even then his character arc disappointed me to the point where I was so frustrated  I almost cried. While Glasgow has a wonderful premise filled with immense potential, the entire book falls and falls hard.

First off, the plot is literally all over the place. There is the main plot, which ends up being something completely different than what was expected (which, in this case, was unpleasant and jarring instead of exciting) and then what feels like twenty other subplots all happening at the same time (including a random romance plot? That doesn’t fit into the story? And actually contradicts Emory’s entire character arc and makes her go backwards in progression by the end?) and while, yes, Emory does change through the novel, her entire arc just…sucks. I hated it, and I don’t tend to hate things! She was trying to learn to heal and take time for herself, but the arc just crashes and burns by the time the book is over.

Plus, there were multiple times in the novel where I had to physically put the book down and walk away because it didn’t make sense or was just too ridiculous for me, including a subplot about Emory’s English class acting super entitled, and a time where Emory’s drama teacher just visits her at her house one morning that felt super random, mildly creepy, and just not needed, so I don’t know why it was included. There were multiple unexplored plot lines about Emory’s parents and sister, her friends, and I just wish that Glasgow had either just not mentioned them at all, or put down some random subplots (like the romance!!) and picked those up instead. It was like what I wanted to explore was abandoned, and what I wanted to abandon was explored.

But yeah, I really did not like this one, and do not really recommend it. Of course this is simply opinion, but it’s a strong one.

1/6 stars, and it would have been 0 if I didn’t grow attached to one character.