I really wanted to like this book. The synopsis held so much promise, but the book failed to deliver as much as I hoped for from it. I enjoyed it well enough, but with a few tweaks it could have been an even more enjoyable read.

As always, anonymous releases a gripping story that has be up all night until I turn that lazy page. The writing and story telling gets me every single time.

Bailey is a high schools student starting her first year at a pretentious boarding school. As most high schoolers would be, she is worried about making friends and settling in, but she never could have imagined the friends she would fall in with a group who calls themselves the Science Club and provides half of the town with homemade meth. Breaking Bailey dealt not only with teenage drug addiction but also with teenage drug distribution. Bailey is stuck between her friends and her morals and ultimately has to decide which is more important. The reader can feel her pain through each diary entry as she is pulled further and further into trouble that she never expected she would ever fall into. There is fantastic character development with Bailey, because it her diary, but the rest of the characters felt grey in comparison and seemed very shallow. I would have liked to see more of their personalities. Overally, I really, really enjoyed this book. I felt the ache in my own gut as I watched Bailey on her journey and I think this is a fantastic book on a topic that is very underrepresented in the young adult world.

Bailey is trying to keep her mind off her mother’s death as she begins her life at a new school. Her dad has moved on and even has a new wife to go with his new life. She knew this boarding school would be hard, but she did not expect to be taken in by a group of students calling themselves the “Science Club.” Although they are very smart students, they don’t study when they are together. They are using their brains to make drugs and sell them in the local community. Now Bailey has money and a boyfriend, but it seems her academics cannot keep up with this highly demanding extracurricular activity. Will Bailey follow the crowd in order to stay accepted? Is there a line that Bailey is not willing to cross?

Breaking Bailey is a stand-alone novel about the slippery slope that comes with drugs. Whether the person is a drug manufacturer, drug seller or drug user … there are issues that get murkier as time continues on. Readers who enjoyed Go Ask Alice will be drawn to this title, yet the story in these pages is not as heart gripping as the other story. I haven’t read too many books about the people who actually make the drugs, so that was different, but overall it was just a good read. Many readers will enjoy it, but it won’t be as popular as Go Ask Alice.

I actually never read Go Ask Alice even though I’ve heard all about it and this book soundedery similar except in a different setting. I had always thought that even though Go Ask Alice was written anonymously, it was a true story. I’m not sure why I thought that, but this book made me realize maybe they aren’t real stories. I mean, yes, these stories probably happened in some capacity to someone somewhere, but they aren’t necessarily perfectly accurate. There’s no way this book was a real diary of a girl in private school. Even though they definitely got some aspects right: the pressure and stress, copious amounts of homework, etc. but it just didn’t seem quite realistic enough to me. It only bothered me a little bit to realize that this couldn’t be a real diary,
I think the book could have been a lot shorter, it became very repetitive at times. I liked Bailey okay, but she wasn’t very insightful or special. She didn’t have a unique personality or perspective. The only thing that made her interesting at all was her mother’s death. The ending was disappointing and honestly kind of lazy. It was a quick read, though, and I did enjoy it. Fans of Go Ask Alice will probably also enjoy this one.

Much like Go Ask Alice, this book is way too much about crazy dramatics. What kind of bothers me about these sort of books is that they end up sounding like afterschool specials.