Kathleen Glasgow’s third novel “You’d Be Home Now” is a perfect example of how not to write a realistic and engaging novel for young adults. 

How could this novel have won any awards, let alone be nominated for a Lincoln award? This novel cannot compare to the other beautiful work of art nominations like “All My Rage” by Sabaa Tahir or “In the Wild Light” by Jeff Zentner. I can’t believe our peers voted to willingly read this abomination. 

The book is meant to be a commentary on how members of drug addicts’ families are affected by their addictions. It’s meant to be a commentary on how people react to loss and grief. It’s meant to be a commentary on the mistakes in the high school education system. It’s meant to wax poetic, to be a quotable award winning novel, to prove itself by referencing classic literature and poetry. It fails.

The execution of each character feels incredibly surface-level and bland; none of the characters aside from the protagonist and her brother are memorable. Characters who are friends never act like friends, For example, at one point in the story the protagonist’s drama teacher appears at her bedside to cheer her up; it was meant to be a reassuring and meaningful scene, but it came off more creepy than anything. 

Glasgow had so many opportunities within the plot to discuss the main character’s perspective on her brother and her fears after the car accident that started the plot. Instead Glasgow decided to whine endlessly about how hard it was to be rich.

This might just be the worst book I have ever had the displeasure of forcing myself to finish. You can tell that the author has no love for the art of writing. Not even tolerance for it. 

Scenes that are obviously meant to be meaningful fall short. I wonder if she only writes the main character as being bullied for being rich because she too is a rich privileged girl who used her family’s money to make it in the writing industry. It’s really the only reason this horrible thing could ever get published. 

Her obvious and frequently stated hatred of classical literature makes it feel as if this woman has never picked up a book that wasn’t self published on wattpad. She constantly criticizes everything from “Lolita” to “The Scarlet Letter.” Glasgow is in no position to criticize Nabokov when she has the writing skills of a group of immortal monkeys with typewriters.

Her inability to write believable high schoolers or even believable women has caused me to consider if this was written by chatGPT. Unbelievable characters run rampant from teachers that show up at a student’s house unannounced to trauma dump and teenagers who unironically reproduce bullying scenes that should come from low budget, generic 90s high school movies.

I give it 2 out of 5 stars. Despite my hate for it, she did try. Glasgow has potential, she just simply isn’t utilizing it.

The only way this book could be slightly palatable is if I, like the author, was a whiny rich girl who was completely disconnected from the rest of society and had the mentality of an edgy 11 year old.