"There are families, which, through a combination of genetics, culture, and inclination, produce a startling number of professional athletes, such as tennis players or hockey stars. Then there are families like the Baldwins, which produce a high percentage of actors. My family seems to specialize in people who enjoy drinking. And taking drugs. In such families, there is usually one person who stands out as particularly gifted in the field. When I was a teenager, that person was me. I was the star, the Alec Baldwin, if you will. I started drinking seriously when I was thirteen, smoking pot with a vengeance at fourteen, and getting into cocaine at sixteen. By the time I was twenty I was done. Nice Recovery is the story of how I slipped so far off course, how I got back on track, and, most importantly, what it's like to come of age as a sober young person."
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“Juby tells her story with such honesty and warmth that it's easy to empathize with both her ascent into alcoholism, for that's what it was for her, and then her spiralling downfall. Her story is also interspersed with the same wonderfully incisive humour that distinguishes her novels, though she is careful to avoid flippancy; her book, after all, was not written for laughs... It is Juby's acceptance and forgiveness of herself that is on display here; her story is, quite simply, an inspiration.”
—The Globe and Mail
“Unlike many addiction memoirs, Nice Recovery isn't a hot mess tell-all. Like Juby herself, it's honest and funny, but avoids over-sharing... If you're drawn to Juby's work because she's more Liz Lemon than Elizabeth Wurtzel, however, rest assured she hasn't abandoned her sense of humour. As she sees it, Nice Recovery is ultimately just like all of her other books, an uneasy mixture of 'the dark and the light'.”
—Quill and Quire
"Juby’s book is a well-written, hilarious and often painfully realistic picture of a young alcoholic, and later, a young person in recovery…This book is for anyone who struggles with substance use/abuse, anyone who cares for a substance abuser, or anyone looking for an entertaining addiction memoir that will likely not require an apology on Oprah."
—Networkedblogs.com
"I’m embarrassed that I lack words to describe the raw elegance of Susan Juby’s Nice Recovery. It is smart, funny, lyrical, desperately candid and astonishingly generous; and it is flat out courageous. It speaks to the very heart of the loneliness and despair that leads to the destruction of so many kids’ dreams. And then it gives us hope. This is not a young adult book; it is not an adult book. It is a human book with the power to literally save lives."
—Chris Crutcher, author of Deadline, Whale Talk and Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes