Exactly how steamy is this story?
R
For a young adult novel, Crank definitely pushes boundaries when it comes to sex. There's a lot of it in this book, and the majority of it isn't very nice. Kristina is accosted by a street gang in Albuquerque; Adam tries to manipulate her into doing the nasty even though she's on her period; and while her relationship with Chase is the closest she comes to a genuine, loving relationship, even their sexual encounters are heavily laced with drugs. The biggest evidence of sex's negative role in the story, of course, comes when Brendan rapes Kristina as part of a drug transaction.
While the descriptions of sex in the poems themselves are hardly pornographic, its role in this book is definitely mature and complex, and because of this, Crank is best reserved for readers who are prepared to navigate such murky—and at times upsetting—waters.