As much as I wanted to love this, it was only okay for me. I thought the purpose was to paint a picture of meth use in a small town, who and why and how. But so much of this book seemed like it was intentionally not doing that.

I never felt like I got a vibe of what meth was doing to the Oelwein. We met meth users and people (police, doctor, prosecutor) whose jobs were affected by meth, but those always felt like individual stories. For me, they didn't add into anything more. And there was just so much biography and background on people, in a way that didn't contribute to the book and felt a little disrespectful. Reding actually talked about how upset people were in the town after he published the book, which just gives me an uncomfortable vibe. He said he almost ruined a friendship with one man in the book who didn't necessarily appreciate his portrayal, especially as a politician. And that dude even got veto power. I can't imagine how everyone else felt.

Reding writes with a kind of typic journalistic style, frequently separating himself from his reporting. There was often a lot of distance in the writing. Sometimes I felt it was gorgeous and fit the story so well, and sometimes it felt dry. Like when he was specifically discussing Oelwein, I really liked the way he wrote. But for the rest of it, the style grated me some.

There was also a lot of history on meth itself and the trafficking of drugs from Mexico into America, and some specific meth dealers in places other than Oelwein, but to be honest, most of that was pretty dull to me. It just wasn't what I was here for and wasn't detailed or insightful enough to add anything. I really wanted an in depth look at this town, and it felt like for a lot of this book I instead got a general overview of the meth trade and history.

At the end, he also talked about how he got a number of basic facts wrong in the first edition- like calling Iowa City the largest city in Iowa. He calls them inexcusable factual errors after people pointed them out, but it left me feeling like if he can't even be trusted to fact check the most basic of information, how can I trust anything else he wrote? I assume the majority of those errors were corrected by my edition, but I'm not knowledgeable enough about any of the subject matter to notice.

Not a bad book, but a little dull and not as insightful as I wanted. It dragged in places for me, but there was enough I found interesting to make it worth the read. It just unfortunately wasn't one that affected me very much.