Fallout by Ellen Hopkins

So I finished Crank, after reading Glass. The ending was really soft. Kristina was talking about her pregnancy and talking in the past tense instead of the present tense the reader got accustomed to.

I just started reading Fallout and it is from a different perspective and 19 years after the conclusions of Glass.

"While this is the end of the series, it serves as a reminder that there really is no end to addiction. Whereas the first two books follow Kristina through her devastating dance with addiction and relapse, this one takes place years later with her eldest children telling their stories. There is Hunter, the child born in Crank and adopted by Kristina's parents (bolstered by the interesting element of dealing with his grandmother's author-celebrity status, which would indicate that he was familiar with her previous semi-autobiographical novels). Then there is Autumn, the "lost" daughter, living with her aunt and grandfather. Also living with OCD and panic attacks and soon to be confronted by a past she knows little about. Finally, there is Summer, jostled in and out of foster care, a notoriously dicey system. She gets a brief reprieve (?) from the system to live with her father and his girlfriend.
Three very different teens, dealing with complex emotional issues all derived from their mother's addiction to the monster meth. Emotionally raw and painfully realistic, the final installment to this tragic trilogy is a satisfying stopping place in one family's on-going saga of addiction and its collateral damage." -Goodreads user

Cooking Day!!

So today was another cooking day.
For lunch I made a croque-monsieur (grilled ham and cheese sandwich) and for dinner I made chicken quesadillas. I thawed the chicken, cut it up, put it in a skillet with Italian dressing, and then stuck it in a tortilla shell with cheese. Bam! Easy meals.

After that, I made Cookies & Cream Cheesecake Cupcakes. Chances are, you have a lot of these ingredients just sitting around in your kitchen! I made 2 dozen cupcakes and an actual cheesecake with the mix. And one container of oreos is not enough! I forgot to count that before leaving the store, but luckily I had some golden oreos in my pantry so I mixed the vanilla oreos in the batter as well.

Ingredients:

42 cream-filled sandwich cookies, such as Oreos, 30 left whole, and 12 coarsely chopped
2 pounds (4 8-oz packages) cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 large eggs, room temperature, lightly beaten
1 cup sour cream
Pinch of salt

Directions:

Preheat oven to 275°F. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Place 1 whole cookie in the bottom of each lined cup.
With an electric mixer on medium high speed, beat cream cheese until smooth, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Gradually add sugar, and beat until combined. Beat in vanilla.
Drizzle in eggs, a bit at a time, beating to combine and scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Beat in sour cream and salt. Stir in chopped cookies by hand.
Divide batter evenly among cookie-lined cups, filling each almost to the top. Bake, rotating pan halfway through, until filling is set, about 22 minutes. Transfer to wire racks to cool completely. Refrigerate at least 4 hours (or up to overnight). Remove from tins just before serving.

From Martha Stewart's Cupcakes

Crank

Book cover

I ordered more of Ellen Hopkins' books last week (and added more to my birthday wishlist) and Crank just arrived in the mail. I started reading it and read 250 pages in one sitting. I haven't had time to read more of it, but I plan to finish it soon.

Crank is the book prior to Glass in this series. Crank tells about Kristina's initial downfall to "the monster," the highly addictive drug crystal meth also known as crank. We are introduced to Bree, Kristina's sexy alter ego. Bree will do all the things good girl Kristina won't, including attracting the attention of dangerous boys who can provide her with a steady flow of crank.