The Hit by Melvin Burgess

A new drug is out. Everyone is talking about it. The Hit. Take it, and you have one amazing week to live. It's the ultimate high. At the ultimate price.
Adam is tempted. Life is rubbish, his girlfriend's over him, his brother's gone. So what's he got to lose? Everything, as it turns out. It's up to his girlfriend, Lizzie, to show him...

I went into this book with no expectations but was wary that it sounded pretty creepy. It wasn't as creepy as I thought it was going to be, no death following us around and depressive thoughts, but it definitely raised questions of mortality and society's influences on... well, everything. 

So, the story was essentially following Adam as he took the pill 'Death' and wanted his last week to be fantastic but nothing really goes right. There was a lot more to it than that, like Lizzie's family and the drug underworld and crime bosses and revolution. Anyway, as the protagonist, Adam did annoy me a little periodically but I did like his and Lizzie's relationship. It wasn't perfect but they both wanted to work on it and that was the base of their story: neither giving up on the other, even when the other is being a prat. 

It was great that it was UK-based, because Manchester does give off this vibe of being a social hub and a great place for criminal underworld and conspiracies. Plus this made it even more scarily realistic, because the drug came about as a way of giving dying people to go out with a bang. 

Wow, this review is quite short, isn't it? Sorry about that, but I don't want to give too much anyway. Especially as the story went in a totally different direction than I thought it would. But I will say that The Hit was a great commentary on social anxieties and peer pressure, in all its forms. Give this one a go, if not for the great story then for the excellent example of UK YA.  

Published 4th April 2013 by Chicken House. Thank you to the publisher for my copy.