Review: Dopesick by Beth Macy

The good

• Helps to raise an important issue to public consciousness.

• I had no idea how bad the opioid epidemic had gotten: the #1 cause of death for Americans under 50! Yikes.

• A damning picture of the drug companies involved; a sad tale of the thousands (millions?) of people who got hurt by it.

The not so good

• It’s mostly a journalistic writing style, which is fine for a newspaper length article, but gets a bit boring for something the length of a book. There are glimpses here and there into the lives of specific people affected by opioids, but nothing that adds up to a story.

Rating: 3.5 stars