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    The Hit
    The Hit
    The Hit
    Audiobook7 hours

    The Hit

    Written by Melvin Burgess

    Narrated by Samuel Roukin

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Live the ultimate high. Pay the ultimate price. The shocking return to YA by the author of SMACK. A new drug is on the street. Everyone's buzzing about it. Take the hit. Live the most intense week of your life. Then die. It's the ultimate high at the ultimate price. Adam thinks it over. He's poor, and doesn't see that changing. Lizzie, his girlfriend, can't make up her mind about sleeping with him, so he can't get laid. His brother Jess is missing. And Manchester is in chaos, controlled by drug dealers and besieged by a group of homegrown terrorists who call themselves the Zealots. Wouldn't one amazing week be better than this endless, penniless misery? After Adam downs one of the Death pills, he's about to find out. Review Quotes: "Booklist "Starred Review Burgess' dystopian novel posits a near-future world in which the gap between rich and poor has grown to an unbridgeable chasm. In their despair, many have-nots are taking a new drug called Death that offers seven days of euphoric bliss followed by the oblivion of death. Adam, 17, is one of these. His hopes for an education are dashed, his brother is missing and presumed dead, and he's been dumped by his girlfriend, Lizzie. Seeing nothing but a bleak future, he impulsively takes the pill, but as his own options are precluded, enormous changes are underway. Led by a group called the Zealots, society is teetering on the brink of revolution. Meanwhile, a drug lord and his psychopathic son enter Adam and Lizzie's lives to potentially catastrophic effect. Will Lizzie survive? Will Adam die or is it possible that there might be an antidote to Death after all? Burgess, a master of YA literature, has written a novel of white-knuckle suspense that has considerable violence and ambitious philosophical underpinnings. How does one deal with socioeconomic inequity? Is revolution a viable strategy? Is death? If this ambitious novel has flaws, it may be a lack of attention to these very questions. In addition, the villains--though terrifying--are over the top. But all that said, the novel is viscerally exciting and emotionally engaging. Best of all, it is sure to excite both thoughtful analysis and heated discussion among its readers. A clear winner from Burgess. "Publishers Weekly "Starred Review Burgess (Smack) returns with a boundary-pushing thriller that all-too-believably builds on contemporary threads including income inequality, the Occupy movement, and a YOLO mentality. On the night he attends rocker Jimmy Earle's final concert, Adam knows that his life has changed. Earle's on-stage demise--supposedly from Death, an expensive drug that provides the consummate one-week high followed by death--has awakened a riotous fervor in depressed Manchester, England, which may mark the beginning of a larger revolution. The high of Adam's night out with his girlfriend, Lizzie, comes crashing down when Adam's older brother, Jess, is reported dead. Suddenly, taking Death means a way out. Burgess's prose is straightforward and fast-paced, and his third-person narration hopscotches from character to character while giving readers clear insight into the motives that drive them. His plot swerves are unexpected but well-maneuvered, and his characters' flaws and self-absorptions make them complex and real. Amid violent action, existential anguish, and the heightened appreciation for life that death can bring, Burgess has created a premise that readers will find hard to forget.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJul 11, 2014
    ISBN9781490624976
    The Hit
    Author

    Melvin Burgess

    Melvin Burgess has produced a body of work that is both challenging and thrilling, including the seminal teen drug and love novels Smack and Doing It. His books have been adapted for film, stage, and television.

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    Reviews for The Hit

    3.5/5

    47 ratings10 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Couldn't really get into this book. All about a drug induced revolution. found I didn't care for any of the characters. Glad I won it on the early reviewers and didn't buy it. just didn't appeal to me at all.
    • 3/5
      This was my first experience with an audio book. I was curios to try one to see if I would enjoy listening to books rather than reading them. While I have found I do prefer to read them, listening to them wasn't bad. I played it while doing chores or driving, but wasn't able to focus as much as I would have, had I been reading it.That being said, I did enjoy the story line. I liked the idea, take a pill and get the best high of your life for a week. Only one catch... you die at the end of the week. For a kid feeling like he had nothing to lose, Adam didn't find this too bad of a deal. The book was good. I liked the different characters that Burgess introduced. I would definitely read other books by him.
    • 3/5
      I would have loved to love this book, but it just didn't not grasp me in the right way. The concept could have been great (a pill that gives the ultimate high for a week and then you're dead) but I do not believe the author really utilized the concept in the best way possible. In fact, the story has two different plots that could have been two different stories and been truly given the attention they deserved. Instead, the reader's attention was divided between that of what this young boy Adam was going to do with his 1 week, and the revolution of Manchester. I teetered between 2.5 stars and 3 stars because while I thought it was ok it also made you think a little at times. It also had some goofball villains which can be fun. In the end, I was just left feeling that The Hit fell short.*I received a free copy of the audiobook in exchange for an honest review*
    • 2/5
      I...don't know. This was kind of forgettable, really. There's this drug where you have this amazing week where you can do anything, then you die. There are revolutionaries call Zealots who may or may not be associated with the drug. There is the main character's obsession with getting laid. There's his missing brother. It was entertaining enough, but it didn't leave much of an impression on me.
    • 5/5
      This is a near future, British, teenage dystoian science fiction books that tucks a happy ever after ending on a very interesting story. I got the audiobook format free from Library-thing for a review. The story was narrated with the British accent we are familiar with from television programs from England. Since it was set in Manchester, that made a lot of sense and helped localize the story. We focus in on three young people who should be happy, with their lives ahead of them. But due to employment and political and economic factors familiar to Americans, they don't see much of a future. Because a drug has been developed that improves and shortens the lives of Alzheimers patients, killing yourself is easier and more fun than it's ever been before. What happens to our young people to bring their happy ever after is surprising.
    • 4/5
      Truth be told, this was my first experience listening to an audiobook. I've been hesitant to try them as I thought that I may miss details, lose my place, or just not CONNECT with the story. My fears proved (mostly) unfounded. (I say mostly because I'm not sure that my "reading" was as thorough as it would have been had I actually read it (as opposed to listening to it)). I was pleasantly surprised by the emotion that was conveyed in this particular reading, and I like to think that it added to my first positive experience with audiobooks. I listened to this book on the way to and from work. The only complaint that I had with the format is that I had to stop the story when I arrived at my destination. I found myself sitting in the driveway, not wanting to get out, just wanting to find out what happened next. I don't own a portable CD player anymore (who does?), so this was a strictly to-and-from work reading experience."Death" is all the rage with the youngsters, a new designer drug popularized by a rockstar. The user experiences 7 days of euphoria - the highest highs, the lowest lows - the experience of a lifetime. This high doesn't come without a price though; at the end of the 7 days, the user promptly dies. Thousands of teens are turning to "death" after the literal death of a musician at the finale of his concert. A group of activists known as the Zealots are capitalizing on this uprising, using the frenzied youth to oppose the government and issues relating to inequities between the classes. In the midst of all this chaos are Adam and Lizzie, star-crossed lovers from opposite sides of the track. When Adam takes death and turns to Lizzie to help him complete a bucket list, things start to spiral out of control. Adam and Lizzie are aggravatingly teenage - whiny, self-obsessed, hormone-driven little fools. While this is to be expected, they, naturally, weren't my favorite characters. Christian, the psychotic man-boy mobster, was by far the most original. Both Vince and Christian made for fabulous villains. C4, C4, C4!The language and subject matter may be a bit rough for the younger YA audience. I would only recommend this to the older teen readers capable of a few swear words and some sexual situations.I was fortunate enough to receive this book as part of LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program. Thanks!
    • 3/5
      A new drug gives you a great high - but you are dead in a week. A group of gangsters is mass-producing a cheap version, and a group of local terrorists is distributing it to a restive population. Adam decides to take it after learning of his brother's death. Lizzie, his girlfriend, promises to stick by him for the week. Trying to find an antidote, she gets in way over her head.
    • 4/5
      Perhaps the future isn’t completely bleak and terrible as Melvin Burgess’s latest teen-lit novel, THE HIT, proposes. While there is despair and bleakness for the youth of Manchester, England, there is also the possibility of love. Of course, in Burgess’s hands, love is very complicated, being 17 is even worse, and both together are almost a total catastrophe.Adam is the younger of two sons. His brother, the chemist, helps supports the family single-handedly now that their father can’s work due to the accident, which makes Adam the lesser of the two. And Adam dreams of being a soccer star, but he isn’t good enough to make the cut.. And there is Lizzie, the girl of Adam’s dreams and at present, only a friend.But when rock star Jimmy Earl dies of the drug Death on stage at a concert the two attend, and the city itself seems to fall under the heel of anarchists, the two do more than stay friends. And it is all due to Death. Death lets you live better, happier, stronger, faster and smarter; in fact you suddenly experience life like you would want to. There is a downside to all this goodness; after 7 days, you die.Of course, in the riots and the calls for overthrowing the government and the swirl of events around them, Adam foolishly takes the drug. This leads to an increasing horrendous series of events including dealing with the murderous criminals who are the masterminds behind the drug, an increasing insane thug who is protected by his father’s criminal group, radical teens who run amok, and worse of all, the things two people will do in the name of love.Above all else this is a story of redemption, of discovering the meaning of life and love even as you know you are about to lose both. If you can make it through the dark day there is a glowing night ahead of you, and possibilities abound.
    • 5/5
      One incredibly unique story! Death is a drug, a pill that you swallow that permits you to enjoy life to the very, very fullest for seven days - and then you die. Seventeen-year-old Adam takes it and makes his "bucket list" - all the things he really wants to do before he dies - but all is not quite this simple in this near-future story. Excellent.
    • 3/5
      I really liked the premise and had high hopes of enjoyment, but alas, disappointment...