In Ecstasy by Kate McCaffrey

So this book 'in ecstasy' caught my eye while I was borrowing books from the library since I really have no social life and reading is better than wasting your time sitting in front of the monitor refreshing the facebook/tumblr page :/

So the blurb says:

Ecstasy. I'd always thought I might try it one day. I'd heard kids at school talking about getting wasted on the weekends. They made it sound awesome. I pictured the roughly made tablets with their tiny butterflies. An amazing experience inside a tiny pill. 
My body ached and my face was sore - I guess from smiling so much. I don't remember ever laughing more. A new world had opened up fro me, a place where I was confident and beautiful and a hot guy like Lewis wanted to be with me. That morning I figured life couldn't get any better. How could something that made you feel like that be bad for you?

So we studied Anna's Story in school and they actually mentioned it in here.

'Go easy, Mia. Drinking too much water can be as bad as dehydration.' 

 'What?' How could pure water be bad for you?

'A girl died. She drank heaps of water, way too much, and it diluted her blood. Her brain was swollen.' 

They also mentioned how society has that whole propaganda thing telling you everything about why drugs are so bad for you and everything. It's very realistic. It covers a whole lot of issue and the author is honest and doesn't side with either side. It's not biased. So this is a book, I would recommend to teenagers and parents and people who want to know the truth about the drug culture. This was definitely a good read and I couldn't put the book down. It's from these two girls point of views - Mia and Sophie.




We are introduced to two best friends - at first the story is all innocent and lighthearted. Everything is happy and all laughter. Sophie is the one with the social life and the perfect appearance and life. She can get any guy she wants. Mia is the one who is pretty average and tags behind Sophie. They're at a party and there we are introduced to some minor and major characters. Dominic 'Dom' who is Sophie's ex-boyfriend, though we think it's all normal for Sophie. She's the kind of character who would breakup and go out with guys. Sophie introduces Mia to Lewis Scott, the perfect year 12 guy who has everything - looks, money, popularity...drugs. There is where Mia first takes ecstasy.


Mia's side of the story views ecstasy positively from a person who is taking drugs and how it makes ecstasy look so good and how it makes her feel. How she went from this average girl to the girlfriend of Lewis Scott and had everything. She felt so confident of herself and so up herself. She felt beautiful, popular and everybody liked her because she was more outgoing. I thought I was reading 'The Perfect Boyfriend' all over again. I had recently just returned it. It was a Girlfriend fiction. Similar situations but Mia's situation turns out really different. I just felt like screaming to Mia and telling her what a bitch she's become! I guess that's one of the effects that ecstasy has on people.

Sophie's side of the story tells us about the past and her perspective. At first I thought she'd be like the after-ecstasy-Mia but she turns out the be the better of the two. She's gone out with heaps of guys and go to heaps of parties and takes drugs and everything. But because of some experiences she's had, she's vowed to never have sex with anyone until after high school because she felt so downgraded after an incident. She likes to be in control of her life. She turns to her best friend when problems start happening in her life but she realizes her best friend isn't really her best friend Mia anymore. Instead, there's this social butterfly, popular, beautiful, confident person with a perfect boyfriend who doesn't even care what Sophie has to say and only thinks she's jealous of her.

Mia's life takes a turn when she breaks up with Lewis after seeing Tower, a hilarious friend of Lewis's, die from drug overdose. She is scarred because of what she's seen and the things that happened that night. But does that stop her from taking drugs? NO. She keeps on taking ecstasy and weed and gets herself a new boyfriend, Glenn, who ends up being a drug dealer and is the person who traumatized Sophie. Mia ends up losing a lot of weight, getting raped, and ends up losing everything she had. It's to the point where she only feels confident with ecstasy so she has to steal from her dad's and Sophie's bank account. It's to the point where she ends up in rehab and having to repeat the grade at a different school (though she chose to go to a different school)



Sophie leaves the party/drug scene and ends up with a smart girl who everyone thinks doesn't have a social life but Sophie thinks differently. She ends up with Dom who I think is the only unrealistic part of the story XD  because he's just way too perfect. Especially when at the beginning, he cheated on Karen because he had always loved Sophie and what happened to the drunk Dom? Now he's like sober all the time. Mia and Sophie's friendship sort of separates a bit since they don't have much things in common anymore.

Though I think I won't spoil the book for you anymore...You should definitely get it out from your local library or ask for it at the book stores.

I truly really loved this book to the point where I finished it all in one day. I really loved the issues it faces. When we were studying about drugs in school I thought it was very biased like it was full on wrong and no matter what drugs is bad. In the text books they go on about what some kinds of drugs are made of and the side effects (the bad side effects - they don't tell you the good effects). Which I do agree but they don't tell you why teenagers keep on taking it and it just gives you more of a 360 degree overview of the situation when you read the book. You see both sides of the story. This book gives you good information about many issues teenagers face in today's society. Even after Tower's death, many of the teenagers continued to take drugs and many of the people who knew Mia was in rehab told themselves that it would never happen to them even though they took drugs themselves!