I loved how well written this book was and how you felt like you were living thru all the struggles with the family. This book takes you on an emotional rollercoaster. I feel like this book was very well thought out and offers you a look at how other family members may feel and handle problems that occur in their family.

I loved Emory's story and seeing how she felt about and dealt with all that was going on with her brother Joey. I felt pulled into the story and couldn't put the book down. I was saddened by the way her parents acted about everything and how I felt their expectations were unreal.

Going into this book, I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect. But it turned out to be one of the best, saddest, most beautiful, heart wrenching and wonderful stories I’ve ever read. It is told from the perspective of Emory, a high school girl, who is recovering for a car accident that killed her friend, and injured her while her brother was overdosing. The thing that I found so incredible about this story was how much I felt all the feelings right along with Emory. I laughed, I cried, i cringed. While it is also a harrowing tale of addiction and the destruction it can cause in a families life, it is also a coming of age tale about life itself as a teen when you’re just trying to get through the day. This book will stay with me and this author is an auto buy forever. So many thanks to NetGalley and Delcorte Press for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Lovely and thoughtful piece of writing. Thoroughly enjoyed enjoyed the book even though the subject matter was difficult:

This book was so interesting and engaging. I loved the writing style, it really fit the plot. I loved Emory and sympathized with her and felt how she felt. She was truly a wonderful character. This is my first time reading Kathleen G. But I hope to read her other books in the future . Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publishers for this arc.

Everyone tells Emory who she is, but after the devastating summer before her junior year, she isn't so sure anymore. Everyone lives secret lives.

This book kept me engaged throughout and was well written, I highly recommend.

Everyone in the town of Mill Haven thinks Emory's life is perfect. She lives in a big house (with 3 fireplaces!) with her older brother. Her family has tons of money, and her beautiful, intelligent sister is in a prestigious college. When a car accident reveals her brother's drug addiction, Emory is thrown into the spotlight, but not in the way she wanted.

Glasgow does a great job of handling drug addiction through the eyes of Emory, her sister, and their parents--those who are adjacent to the addict but still impacted by addiction. Her inclusion of the homeless population was an important addition that I haven't seen in other books with similar topics. I also think the incorporation of Emory's relationship with Gage was done well. A book that tackles addiction and other important topics in a real way that is less gritty than some other books--making it more palatable for more conservative populations.

You’d Be Home By Now By Kathleen Glasgow tackles substance abuse, bullying, self -esteem issues and all of the anxiety produced by being a teenage. Each of those topics merits many books on their own but Kathleen Glasgow has been very successful at combining all of those topics and more into a poignant yet hopeful story about being a teenager and all that entails.. at one point, I considered putting the book down because I didn’t like the direction it was going, but I’m glad I didn’t. It’s been a while since I was a teenager, but so skillful was the author that I was transported back to those days. As Shadow told Emmy, you have to hope. And then hope some more.

I enjoyed this novel about high school student Emory and her brother, who tries--and fails--to stay clean after rehab. Their terrible parents and their self-absorption rang true, as did Emory's struggle to deal with survivor's guilt, social ostracization, and an unexpected romance. Emory's development --pushing back against her mother's heartlessness and her father's absenteeism--and her drive to save her brother makes for a good story, although the homelessness camp plot line feels forced. A decent read for book groups, particular parent-child groups.

Overview: Emory has always been the good one. The nice one. The easy one. The invisible one. Her older sister, Maddie, is gorgeous and talented. Her older brother, Joey, is struggling with addiction issues, and her parents saddle Emory with the responsibility of being his forever babysitter. No one thinks about Emory ever. Which leads her to pick up a habit of stealing and collecting small things and hooking up with the high school baseball star next door to feel seen, important. While Joey is stuck on the rollercoaster of his addiction, his family is right there behind him, and as Emory struggles to keep Joey stable, she's also left to contend with her own precariously okay life. Overall: 5+

Characters: 5 Emory is maybe the most universally relatable teen character in YA. She feels unheard and unseen by her parents in the world. A part of her seems to question if she's lovable, capable of being someone's priority. Because her family life is so chaotic with her extraordinarily strict and disapproving mother, a mostly absent father, and a brother that dominates everyone's time, she acts out in small, quiet ways to try to find a release or an outlet. Gage Galt across the street knows how to take advantage of that. Shocked that Gage remembered a poem she recited in 8th grade, Emory gets roped into hooking up with Gage in her pool house and letting him take compromising photos of her through the windows. She enjoys the way Gage makes her feel seen, but it also hurts every time Gage rebuffs her requests for them to be together in public, even just as friends. Deep down, she doesn't really want to give him the photos either, but she's overwhelmed by how good it is to feel seen. This is a kind of relationship dynamic that is so common among real teens. Girls being driven by the rush of finally feeling, noticed, special, important, and knowingly or unknowingly a lot of boys take advantage of that. But it's never love when it's about pictures, and from the moment the book started, I just wanted to yell at Emory to run.

Emory starts the book with really no support system (hence the reason Gage is so impactful). Her mother is cold, and if she received any remotely bad news, she'd probably just yell at Emory anyway. And her dad spends so much time at the hospital, he's oblivious to anything going on in the house. She's lost all her kinda friends from dance team because they don't want to be associated with a girl who was in the car when Candy died in the accident that ruined Emory's knee, got her brother, Joey, sent of rehab, and got Luther busted. Over the course of the book, though, Emory finds a new, better group. Luther's younger brother who gets it, Emory's ex-childhood best friend, Liza, who's able to come back around, and Daniel from English class who always wears the scarves. Liza is so incredibly smart and witty, and I immediately both wanted to be Liza and be her best friend. And Daniel offered Emory a look at what real, genuine love and feelings are. Each of her new friends is dealing with their own family trauma or past struggles, so there's little judgement and heaps of compassion to go around.

Then there's Joey. Kathleen has written in-patient treatment before (in her debut book, Girl In Pieces), but this book takes on a completely different lens. We experience Joey from his sister's point of view. His sister who loves him more than the world and tries her best to empathize with why he keeps going back to drugs, even as they continue to wreck his life and his family. She shows us the parts of Joey we probably wouldn't be able to see from his perspective. How gentle he is and how sweet he is by nature. How he's a bit soft and impressionable, like clay. And how a long series of extremely powerful medication, starting from an accident when we was young, sent him down this road. There are so many ups and downs in the story, and thought there are plenty of hopeful moments, as in all YA books, she doesn't steer away from the truth.

Plot: 5 I did not want to put this book down. At the beginning, this is much more of a feels book. Emory is drifting through the world, trying to find her footing again after the accident that tore up her knee and her life. We spend most of the first half deeply rooted in Emory's head as she tries to work through her issues. Then, in the second half, there are some major plot moments that switch the book into a more plot focused gear as there are elements of suspense and nearly heist-like or thriller elements employed. It'll make your heart race and the pages keep turning. I found that I couldn't pull myself away from either section. Even as she manages to pack a lot into the plot, all of it makes sense, and nothing feels extra or out of bounds for the story.

Writing: 5 Kathleen Glasgow writes devastating books. This one, though, takes on a different tone for me. It's the first book of hers I didn't cry reading, and I think that's because the book centers the story in a different place. While Charlie and Tiger's stories are achingly real, fresh, and in the moment, most of Emory's trauma is a secondary branch of something that happened to someone else as well. Many times, she feels like she can't fully own what's happened to her because someone had it worse. This book is more big picture than simply sitting in Emory's world. I finished it wanting to give the whole world a giant hug. Everyone is going through so much and working so hard to hide it. The book made me angry that we live in a wealthy country that lets people live on the street and treats addiction like a moral failing when, more often than not, it's sparked by the ridiculously fragrant overuse of pharmisutical drugs in the medical system. We're more than happy to dispense these drugs, but there's no help in using them safely, in slowly weaning off of them. Instead we cast systemically created problems into individual moral failings so they're easier to dismiss and shirk responsibility from. The United States is a country that fundamentally lacks and undervalues support in every single sense of the word from mentalities around how we live our lives to social services to parenting styles to the stupid "pull yourself up by your boot straps mantra". That's what I took away from this book.

Kathleen is an excellent writer and one of my favorites in YA. I really enjoyed this book and its new style and direction while staying close to themes she always writes with so much care and attention. Her books are powerful tools, and that should not be ignored. This was an important book, but it was also a fun read with plenty of light moments, heart racing moments, and side plots that seem to just exist to make you smile. We get to watch Emory fall down, but there's also the beauty of watching her have a community around her to pick her back up for the first time.

Heart warming and thought-provoking -- especially on the topic of addiction and mental health -- and everything I was hoping for from the author of GIRL IN PIECES. Emory and Joey are from a wealthy family in Mill Haven. On the surface, they have it easy, but this book asks us to look deeper, to challenge what we see on the surface and the judgments that come with that. It turns out Joey is an addict, and Emory would do anything to help him — but she has her own secrets too. You’d Be Home Now is poetic and raw, complicated and compelling, and necessarily heavy at times. But in the end, more than anything, this book is about hope. It’s a book that asks us to reconsider how we think of addiction, and we do it step by step with Emory, holding her hand all the way.

Likes:
Emory was in an accident that killed a girl from high school. She wasn’t driving but she was in the car as a passenger, along with her brother, Joey, who was high on drugs when the accident happens. How does she go on from that? Do people really care how she feels? She gets blamed at school for the death. But in her own family she always feels invisible – her brother is a druggie so he gets plenty of negative attention, her older sister was popular and hot, so she got a lot of the positive attention which means Emory is the invisible one. Emory may not turn to drugs but she finds her own ways to cope with her dysfunctional family and she’s just trying to survive high school.

This story tackles drug addiction in young people straight on. It mentions the small town and how other people and their families may be affected by the drug problem. I liked how Joey is sent to rehab, we don’t have scenes from rehab but we get to see what recovery in the beginning stages would like – especially in a family like Emory’s. Her dad is an ER doctor, her mom is a lawyer – they are the richest family in town, but their life is hardly perfect. Their mom is stern, and their dad hardly there – it leaves these kids floundering.

Another great thing about this story is how it brings up how adults were once kids too dealing with their own stuff but generations are so different. I used to be like Emory – kind of lost and unsure and quiet, but I was brought up in the “deal with it” generation – and that’s what I did. As an adult and parent now, I definitely try not to be how my parents were with me and this book definitely gets it on these issues between parents and children or just adults and children.

I love Emory’s love for her brother. It’s heartbreaking and frustrating for any family to deal with addiction. I can’t say I have been in that situation but friends have been, or I’ve known people with drug problems and it’s tough to want to help and yet waiting for the person to want the help. Emory doesn’t give up on Joey and you know Emory is always being told what to do, how to be – people tell her to grow a spine even, she gets bullied, she feels like she doesn’t have a voice – but that girl is so brave to love and fight for her brother. She even weathered all that bullying with a shrug almost, the only thing to her that really mattered was her brother. And that’s what made me cry. The ending of this book is so emotional, but her love was there.

Random Notes:
Triggers: drug use, cyber bullying, car accident, addiction

Even though this story deals with some heavy topics, it felt like a light read – I didn’t feel dragged down by all the strong emotions the characters felt and yet it wasn’t light-hearted. The way it’s written was easy to read, easy to digest, even in the emotional parts in the end. I still felt hopeful for this family. Hopeful for Emory.

Final THOUGHTS:
Why you should read it:
*a raw look at addiction, whether it’s to drugs, or to getting affection from a stranger
*it gives us adults a good reminder at what kids go through, and gives kids a reminder that they aren’t alone
*it’s emotional, especially when it comes to how addiction can fracture a family
an important read because addiction is a problem in our country (USA)

Why you might not want to read it:
*heavy topics
*triggers

My Thoughts:

This is an important story about a family dealing with a loved one with addiction, and a whole town trying to deal with a problem that is growing. This story is raw, heartbreaking, sad, and yet there was still a thread of hope for Joey’s recovery, for the Ward family to stay strong, for Emory to be seen and find her voice and even for the town to help their own community. This one should be a must read for teens, young adults and adults.

So many things about this amazing book! Yes it’s young adult but it’s a seriously deep subject actually a few that intertwine. Family drama, high school drama, drug addiction and a wonderful brother sister relationship.

This is the 2nd book by this author and I really enjoyed it. She definitely knows how to pull on all the heartstrings. Definetly recommend it to anyone!

I just... THANK YOU SO MUCH TO NET GALLEY AND RANDOM HOUSE CHILDRENS FOR AN E-ARC OF ONE OF MY MOST ANTICIPATED RELEASES THIS YEAR.

Kathleen Glasgow blew me away with Girl in Pieces. I am so excited to announce that the same is true with her third release You'd Be Home Now.
I've read many, many stories of addiction and substance abuse, but none from a family's perspective.
I laughed, I cried, I down right hoped Joey was okay. (Also.... fuck GG)
Glasgow has a way of writing characters where you feel like you've been friends forever. I felt connected to these characters and this story and I can't wait for you all to get your hands on this book on September 28th.
And seriously, I don't know how anyone can wait that long.

You’d Be Home Now is a YA novel told from the viewpoint of Emory and is a stark realization of the drug addictions that are plaguing our high school students today.

Emory is the youngest of three siblings. Oldest sister Maddie, is already in college, but Joey and Emory are still in high school. The summer before Emory’s junior year, Joey, Emory, and two friends are involved in a car accident and one of their friends is killed. Joey is high on drugs when the police arrive and he is sent to rehab.

Once Joey returns from rehab, Emory spends her school year ‘babysitting’ Joey and the family tries everything they can to help him. In the end though unless an addict is willing to help themselves, there’s nothing anyone else can do for them.

An eye opening book about addictions, specifically in high school students and what their families are going through. I’m thankful to have read this. Thanks to NetGalley & the Publisher for the ARC.

Read this one and my review is to come. I just love Kathleen Glasgow's writing, and the way she tackles important topics.

4/5 stars!

*Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Children's for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!*

One of my favorite things about reading is the emotional impact one may experience when reading a really heart achingly great book. That feeling where the words dip far past your brain and into your heart. That feeling where you want to grab your phone and text those close to you that you love them. That was the feeling I experienced when I finished reading You'd Be Home Now by Kathleen Glasgow.

This book felt so real and so raw. This story shows the impact addiction/substance abuse has not only on the user, but also their loved ones. I could feel Emory's love and heartbreak surrounding her brother and the invisibility she felt from her family and those around her. There are so many fantastic elements in this book and issues that are highlighted, such as a scene in Emory's English class where the books the teacher assigns is challenged by the students (you will understand more context if you read the book). This book specifically focuses on the mental health of the people surrounding the addict and surrounds the question of: How do you live your life when someone you love is going through this?

The beginning for me was a little slow, however once I started to get into it, I could not put it down. If you do pick it up, please be aware of the content warnings. This book is not an easy one to read, but totally worth it. It is sad, it is beautiful, it is real, and I highly recommend!.

A review of this book can also be found on my Goodreads Page.

You'd Be Home Now is a wonderful novel that is both fast paced and filled with large amounts of character development & interesting subplots. I really liked the interesting family dynamic in this book and they ways the characters are perceived after the accident as compared to what we are told was the town's viewpoints pre accident and Candy's death. The book felt very real and and realistic to me in the dialouge, structure, and plot points. The book really shows on addiction can negatively impact lives and how a situation like the one in the book might play out in real life. You'd Be Home Now even discusses how people with addictions are perceived by others vs. the reality of having a substance addiction. I think those who're already fans of Kathleen Glasgow & even newcomers to her work will enjoy this novel immensely.

This is not just another story of family dealing with a drug addicted child. Rather, this is a gut-wrenching look at how addiction affects a family as well as a town.

Emory Ward, 16, feels invisible and has felt this way for a long time. She’s known in the town of Mill Haven as the rich girl. Her mother is a lawyer and her father is a physician, both workaholics. Emmy is the good one. She is not strong-willed like her beautiful older sister Maddie and not difficult like her brother Joey. She takes up as little space in her family as possible. Tragically, Emory and her 17-year-old brother, Joey, are in a car accident in which a girl dies. Joey wasn’t driving, but he had nearly overdosed on heroin. This lands him in a wilderness type rehab. When Joey returns from rehab, the parents are just too busy with their important lives and cannot watch over his comings and going’s so they assign Emory to be his guardian. She is to keep his his addictions under control with a punitive list of rules the parents laid out for HER to enforce. She's also expected to keep on top of her own grades and hold everything together all the while, in addition to dealing with the tragic and emotional events of that summer. Who wouldn’t be resentful, but Emory has a great love for Joey.

Emory secretly rebels, stealing small and some not so small items and hooking up secretly with hot neighbor Gage. Gage is the only person who makes her feel seen, but no one can find out about that. All this and more as her parents continue their lives as if nothing has changed leaving Emory with this huge responsibility. It is her drama class and peers who challenge her to be honest and help her reach her own truth. It sounds like the parents are bad parents, they are not, they genuinely love and do care for their three but, just are misguided and distracted.

This author, Glasgow, is new to me but I will read more of her superb writing. The author states she has personal experience with substance abuse. She based the story on the classic play Our Town but with a twist.

Siblings, Emory and Joey, are exceptionally well portrayed in both their struggles and their joys. Joey’s addiction is horrifying and dark, but it doesn’t necessarily define who he is. I believe this is true of most addicts. If you’ve ever lived the small-town life her portrayal and its interconnectedness of that reality, rings true.

The author’s note states that over 20 million Americans struggle with substance abuse, many beginning the abuse at twelve years of age. She includes resources for teens seeking help.

This book is a necessary and hard topic and important, as well honest, loving, and real life.

After Emory Ward and her brother, Joey, are in a car accident that kills one of their classmates, it is discovered in the hospital that Joey had been using heroin, and his addiction is discovered. Once Joey returns from rehab, Emory is expected to watch and take care of him, as she's known as "the good one" in her family."
The accident has also caused Emory's friends to avoid her, so she reconnects with Liza Hernandez, the girl who was banned from hanging out with her by the Wards years ago after they discovered that Liza's parents had drug addictions. She continues hooking up with star athlete Gage Galt, but soon discovers that he's not interested in a relationship, and an apparent confrontation between him and Joey has humiliating consequences for Emory. There's also a campaign in Emory's class to change their list of required reading, Emory finally confronting her parents about how the "good one" label is harmful to her, and a movement among the girls at school with the aim of putting an end to slut-shaming. I don't want to risk spoiling anything else, so I'll stop there for now.
I liked that Emory's family was wealthy but her problems never fell into a "first-world problem" stereotype. Her parents, on the other hand, weren't my favorite, but their development was good anyway. One of the important storylines for Emory's mom is about how she has the option to turn the old mill area into a nonprofit center dedicated to helping anyone struggling with addiction, but she doesn't know for sure if she's going to do it, despite Emory's insistence that she should. (Yes, she eventually does. I would've liked to see more of how the town changed with the nonprofit's launch, but I already know it would work out well). The "ghosties," or the town's homeless, drug-addicted population living under the bridge, also get help from Emory and her parents, even though her parents look down on them at first.
The eventual love-interest, Daniel, was one of my favorite characters, and definitely better for Emory than Gage was. He has his own backstory of surviving thyroid cancer a year earlier and now wearing a scarf to cover up his scar because he knows people will assume things about how he got it.
Liza's character was definitely a "superficial feminist" stereotype-- that is, clearly based on a stereotype of feminism and not influenced by actual feminism. I mean, does anyone actually use the phrase "male gaze" or is that just something book characters do? Her advocacy for women's rights was clear from the scenes in English class and on her Instagram posts, so was it really necessary for her to change her appearance to avoid "the male gaze" (does anyone even say that?) and throw out the word "patriarchal" in an unrelated conversation? i'm not going to change my rating because of this, but I just think it was distracting. This is the ONLY complaint I have, though.

Also I was worried about this, but thankfully, even though this is based on Our Town, Emory doesn't die at the end! I'm sure readers will appreciate this.

This book was fantastic! It opens your eyes to what addiction can do to anyone. My students are interested and excited to read this book. I think it will start some great discussions. Kathleen Glasgow hit it out of the park per usual.