... will be heart-rending for anyone to read, though I can’t imagine anyone’s heart will be rent in quite the same way addicts’ will.

Rose’s beautifully painful retracing of these events, of her sister’s life and death, in an attempt to untangle this web and reconcile the loss of a loved one.

Andersen has done her research on opioids.

... poignant and distressing.

... heartbreaking.

... one of the rare books in the marketplace that is both written by a recovering addict as well as being the person who bore witness to the downward spiral of addiction and ultimate death of her closest family member. As much personal experience Andersen had with the degradation and destruction of substance abuse, she was forced to stand by helplessly when it came to saving her own sister. Unfortunately, this is the plight of many who love an addict or alcoholic..

... a loving yet harrowing portrait.

Essayist Andersen’s debut memoir is the riveting and raw story of her dysfunctional childhood and her younger sister’s 2013 death from a meth overdose.

Combining the agonizing emotional intensity typical of narratives about losing a sibling with the memoiristic style of a murder investigation successfully complicates the reading experience. A literary grief memoir combined with a skillfully unfolded murder mystery..