Reviews with content warning for Toxic relationship - Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

The overwhelming rawness; there is absolutely no filter, and the movie adaptation expresses this even better. Every “stage” of addiction is captured, and there isn’t too much time spent on a backstory. Generally, people focus too much on backstory or the conditions that fuel an addiction, when there are harsher, more stigmatized aspects of addiction that tend to be overlooked. This book sheds more light on such aspects, specifically the frustrating cycle that is recovery and relapse. I was also impressed by how the author blended the facts about addiction with his personal beliefs and experiences in his writing. This makes more sense when reading the quotes below, but basically, reading this was enjoyable because the author didn’t go on and on about addiction from a purely factual point of view. He appropriately incorporated his own realizations and used facts to justify them.

who are my favourite characters?

David Sheff, simply because of how self-aware he is throughout the book about the role he played in the development of his son’s addiction. This can even be seen in some of the quotes listed below, even if the context of the quote doesn’t relate to David Sheff himself. This book is from David’s perspective, which is unique since most books that deal with substance abuse are written from the user’s perspective. I feel as though the characters of parental figures in these books aren’t crafted as deliberately as they should be. When it comes to parents, I notice the author gets lazy and makes the reactions/developments of the characters almost predictable, which makes it hard to form a connection with the story because parent would deal with this type of situation in their own way, and this way is more often than not unsupportive, which contradicts the pattern that seems to take place in many books that are about addiction. Overall, it is refreshing to see a parent take some degree of accountability for the situation his child is in instead of taking such an action that it overtakes what was supposed to be a plot discussing addiction in its entirety.

what is it about it that's special to me?

This book holds a special place in my heart because of how relatable its themes are for me, but that is also what makes it a super heavy read. Also, I am not the type of person who cries or gets even slightly emotional when reading books with heavy topics. It could be the worst of the worst, and though I would be able to analyze it and understand the intentions of the author and their writing style, it wouldn’t evoke any type of emotional reaction from me. This book, however, is a completely different case. I will never forget this book because it is the first one that has made me shed actual tears. I think perspective has a lot to do with it, and how I can relate many situations I’ve personally been in to the events and characters in the book.

What do I love about the world?

At first I actually found this a bit odd, but I’ve now come to love how, especially in the movie, the family feels isolated from the rest of the world physically and in terms of dialogue and plot. There are no unnecessary characters, and any side characters make only brief appearances and don’t make up the bulk of the plot. Basically, this book doesn’t get side-tracked in any way, something that’s very uncommon.

what themes resonated with me + why?

Obviously there are lots of books that discuss addiction, but I’ve yet to come across a book, or any piece of media for that matter, that addresses the ups and downs of recovery and sobriety as clearly and as thoroughly as this one. There was no sugar-coating. There was no miracle that would allow the viewer to make the prediction that there would be a happy ending. Even though things did start to look up for Nic at the end, we ultimately don’t know how long he has been sober for, and therefore we will never know if he had a happy ending or not. This encapsulates the ever-changing stability of a drug user recovering in a way that is raw, and intentionally makes the reader almost uncomfortable because of how raw it is.

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reemoony's review

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challenging dark emotional informative sad medium-paced

5.0

in one part, he says that nic would watch movies like requiem for a dream, movies that are supposed to dissuade you from drugs, and he would want to get high. i have never in my life related to anything more. i always thought something was wrong with me, and maybe it is, but this book helps. it shows the real story, not a hollywood version. it shows how much they love nic, but couldn’t stand him. they love him more than anything and it ruined them for years. i love this book more than anything.

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