“Little Pills” is a story by Melody Dodds that gives insight into the effect of drug addiction and what it does to you and the people around you through the writing style of poetry. It was published in April of 2019, and was given moderate reviews on “Goodreads” and AbeBooks.” “Goodreads” gave the book a 3.5 out of five, while “AbeBooks” gave it a 3.4 out of five.

The book takes place in a small mill town in Maine, where a girl named Charolette struggles with her daily life. She struggles with the concept of being a “hero” to her family, as her sister hates her, and the fact that Charolette takes drugs daily, ones that her grandma used as painkillers. There is one person who does look at Charolette as a hero, although oblivious to the drug situation, like everyone else. It’s her sister’s friend Mia, who looks up to Charolette like a role model. But as Charolette slowly starts taking more drugs, she must find herself again and think of how she is affecting everyone else she knows, like Mia.

There will be spoilers for this review, so please keep that in mind when reading further into this article.

The story, as said earlier, takes on a concept that is a real-world problem, that being addiction. The writing in this story does a good job at representing what it is like when addicted to drugs and is very much elevated when in a poem format. The writing itself is also great, the poem format gives the story lots of enjoyment, and each line always manages to describe something in the story, keeping the pace stable.

The characters in the book ranged from moderate to alright. There really wasn’t anyone special in this story, other than the main character, Charolette. Charolette always seemed interesting with her perspective on certain things, and watching her slowly become more infatuated with the drugs that she was taking was captivating, as she also begins to push everyone away from her. Johnnie first seemed like a likable person, but as the story went on it was slowly revealed that Johnnie is just as much of an addict as Charolette and a manipulative one at that.

Everyone else in the story wasn’t too interesting, as they all mostly became background characters by the end of the book. Even Mia, who seemed to have an important role in the story, didn’t really get some sort of resolve in her character after she accidentally took some of Charlotte’s drugs, which was an important moment considering the circumstances.

Overall, despite the seemingly average characters, “Little Pills” is a great story that sheds light on the problems of drug addiction in our world. Out of ten, I will give the book an eight.