Fallout Book Report Essay

P.S. I am sorry the summary is so long but I wanted to make sure everything in the book was covered and there being 3 people makes it 2 times longer. The novel is a memoir of the lives of three children of a meth-addicted mother, Kristina, and how her addiction affected their lives. They now live in different homes, with different parents, as well as different last names. Each of them has a different story, some more fortunate than others. Hunter knows about his sisters and new younger brothers, while Summer knows about her brothers and Autumn knows nothing. It starts with Hunter’s story; adopted and raised by his biological mom’s mother and stepfather. He refers to his adoptive parents as â€Å"Mom and Dad.† He works at a radio station in Reno, Nevada. His girlfriend, Nikki, supports him in everything he does. As Christmas approaches, he is living with Nikki and having relationship troubles. Hunter is doing drugs more frequently, and cheats on Nikki with a persi stent radio groupie. All the while, Hunter is feeling like a piece of him is missing because of the lack of knowledge about his father. When he sees him, he knows, but his father is the date of his coworker, Montana. Hunter then gets drunk and calls Brendan (his father) out on his actions about how him raping Kristina produced Hunter. Once that situation is in the past, another problem occurs, as Hunter is approached by Nikki, who hears a voicemail left by Leah on Hunter’s phone about the cheating incident. He is kicked out of Nikki’s house and takes the guestroom in his parents’ house because, thanks to Kristina, his two younger brothers, David and Donald, have moved in and taken his room. Shortly after Hunter has moved back in, he is notified that Kristina will be spending Christmas with them. Autumn’s story takes place at her grandfather’s house in Texas. Her OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) and frequent panic attacks make her a loner at school, so her best friend is her Aunt Cora. Although she promises Autumn they will always be friends, she is wooed by her massage therapist professor and taken away from her. A new boy comes to her school and is immediately taken with her. She has a hard time opening up to him and even tells him her parents are dead. His name is Bryce and he ends up being Autumn’s first boyfriend, first kiss and first time. When her aunt announces her engagement, the happiness she gets from her new boyfriend fades and she feels alone. Desperate to make sure he stays with her, she has sex with him without protection. Realizing that being drunk makes everything easier to deal with, she begins drinking to make herself feel better. Her father’s and grandmother’s interruption at Aunt Cora’s wedding only makes things worse, bringing her past to her present; then, Bryce finds out her parents aren’t dead. Devastated about the lying, Bryce leaves Autumn, and to make matters worse her drinking has gotten out of hand and she is almost raped by the groom’s cousin, Micah. The wedding ends when Autumn realizes how lonely she is and begins to wish she is pregnant, and her father finds her and tells her how she came to be. In the process, he convinces her to go to Reno for Christmas to see the mother she never knew. The California foster system took Summer away shortly after living wi th her father when they were abandoned by Kristina. She knows everyone in her family except for Autumn. Her father’s ex-girlfriends have molested and used her, causing her to be thrown in different homes with different problems. Her life is pretty stable in one home until one of the meth-using girls that also lives there molests one of the younger girls; it hits close to home and she is unable to control her anger. She gets in a fight with the meth girl and ends up getting sent to live back with her father and his girlfriend of the moment. The day after the fight, her boyfriend, Matt, saw her face and offered no sympathy, so she ran to his best friend, Kyle, who always showed interest. She ends up cheating on her boyfriend with Kyle by having sex with him. She knows that Kyle uses meth and other drugs but his loving nature has drawn her in. When he and Summer confront Matt about their newfound relationship, she sees the side of Kyle she never wanted to and realizes his addiction and anger may cause problems. The living conditions at her father’s house aren’t the be st; the constant smoking irritates her asthma and as Thanksgiving approaches, she starts to miss Kristina. She calls her, but can’t remember why; she was blown away by her mother’s selfishness and when her father is drunk later that night, he reveals that Kristina only cares about herself. Her father being drunk proves to be a much worse situation than just spilling the truth; his drinking costs him a DUI and he loses Summer. She is sent to another home in Fresno. Leaving her boyfriend and life behind, she is unwilling to move far away. When she gets to her new home, she is immediately taken aback by her new foster father. His demeanor worries her and makes her wonder what secrets the other girls in the house might have. She knows from experience not to get close to the other girls in the house, but one of the girls tells Summer her secrets and becomes attached to her. During the few days Summer is there, she hides her cell phone and planned to meet Kyle. When she sneaks from under her foster sister’s watch long enough to escape, she ends up running away with Kyle for Christmas—he is so in love with her that he even attempts to stop using meth for her, which means suffering through withdrawal. She and Kyle save up money and live out of his car while they head to a ski lodge, where Kyle plans to work. The stories collide when Kyle and Summer get in a car accident and the closest place to them is Reno, Nevada. Summer ends up calling her grandfather to pick her up from the hospital the morning after the blizzard hit and the accident happened. Hunter is out picking up Kristina and his grandfather from the airport after spending the early morning making up with Nikki. He knows that things won’t quite be merry and joyful Christmas morning with the whole family being together. Autumn and Trey show up before Summer gets there and when Trey sees Kristina, they are immediately drawn to each other and spend most of the day before dinner talking to each other. Summer tries to be sisterly to Autumn and Autumn doesn’t know what to make of all of it. When dinner starts, David asks when he’ll be going home and Kristina says she doesn’t know; Donald gets angry and tells her he never wants to go back—that he never wants to be with her again. Hunter is the first one to jump up when Kristina acts offended and he yells at her, telling her the only person responsible for what happened to her was her. Summer jumps in the argument too when Kristina begins to complain that she doesn’t have the resources to take care of her kids or give them a good life. The book ends with a newspaper article saying Marie Haskins has put her new book ‘Monster’, on indefinite hold while Kristina is undergoing chemotherapy for cancer. At this point, Kristina has reunited with her husband, Trey, and with her resources, she is trying to make her life better so she can be the mother she has never been. I can’t personally connect to this book but I can emotionally connect to this book. I have a friend in my life that I like a brother to me and he has parents just like hunter, autumn and summer. Drugs are a very personal matter and mess up your life more than anyone can know until it happens to you. I felt what he felt becaus e he is such a dear friend that all I could do was worry about him and wonder how he was doing in that new foster home he was moved to. I always heard all about the stories and the way he was in the foster home. He said it wasn’t easy and it was painful to know that everyone he loved had bailed out on him. He soon developed many of the problems these kids experienced with drinking and doing other drugs. This life isn’t easy from what I have heard. This book is very easy to relate other books by Ellen Hopkins because all of the books I have read by her seem to be about drugs and complications in life including hardships and suffering. I don’t really watch movies in this type of subject but I did hear that there is supposed to be a movie coming out based on the crank series by Ellen. I’m not sure whether it’s out or not but the books are great and movies tend to ruin the reading of the book. Both crank and glass led up to this point in the book series and was consistent throughout the storyline of all three books. There is so much drug abuse in the books and making right decisions is not one of Kristina’s strong points. I believe that the theme of this book is that drugs can ruin lives especially to the young girls out there. The plot of this story is to tell a story from the perspective from the 3 abandoned children that Kristina left behind. There storied tell about the hardships they went through and how life was for them during this painful teenage years. Even though the plot wasn’t very funny, it is very intriguing and interesting to find out what makes people do this to their own children and why they do the things they do. This story is told from the three kids point of view. And it switched off every so often so it was very suspenseful. The setting of this book is in three different places considering the three different points of view. Hunters’ setting was in Reno while Autumn’s setting was in Texas and Summer’s setting was anywhere the foster system took her. In my personal view the climax of the story was when all three of the children met for the first time and got to be a family together. In conclusion, I would recommend this book to anyone that enjoys reading this type of book seeing as how it has sex and drugs in it. I would definitely restrict this book to anyone under the age of 15 or 16. This book is a lot more profane then the others and I feel that you should be at least old enough to understand the meaning and why the book is how it is. Not many people judge books but I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants a good read and interesting enough to make it to when you put the book down you can’t wait to pick it back up. I truly feel her books are amazing and make you see how messed up some situations are.