Clean is a book I read for two reasons: one, it's contemporary, and two, I really like the cover. I meant to read Amy Reed's first book, Beautiful (I like that cover, too), but I never got my hands on it.

Clean is all about five kids in rehab for various drugs and other addictions. When a book is going to be based in a rehabilitation center, it makes it really hard for me to read five different perspectives, because that nearly guarantees I won't have a deep connection with any of them and rather just the surface story of five different individuals - which is exactly what happened with this book. I am very disappointed with the character development and much rather would have stayed with one character throughout to hear all of their thoughts.

The format is interesting enough; group therapy sessions are formatted much like a play, so you can see what everyone is saying. You also get to read essays from each of the kids, which helps to learn more about them. Each of them even had very distinct stories and their voices were pretty well written... but by the end, I didn't care much for any of them or feel particularly invested in any journey.

A place like rehab is very heavily internally focused - dealing with what got you there, your surroundings, your thoughts, how you need to change... which means Clean is not a book full of action, which is okay. But when I don't care for one character over another and we're just skimming the surface a lot of the time, it makes for slow reading.

I know that there are people out there that loved Clean - I'm just not one of them.