Counting Daisies by Nicola Haken

[Nigel Gordon]

Without doubt this has been one of the most difficult reads that I have read for a very long time. Not because the book is badly written or the story badly told. In fact it is really well written and well told. The thing that made it hard for me is the subject, the love between Cameron and Dylan and how Dylan's addiction to heroin affects their relationship. For the last eight years I have been fighting (when he has been out of prison) with my boyfriend's addiction to heroin. It is a fight I recently realised I had lost. 

Nicola Haken in this book examines the thinking of the addict and those who are involved with them. Her insights are true and often painful. Reading her descriptions of Cameron and Dylan and the interaction between them I realised she was describing events that I had experienced with my boyfriend.

The book follows the life of Cameron and Dylan, two boys who fall in love but are forced apart by circumstances when they are thirteen, only to come together fifteen years later. By then Cameron's life has become one of success. Dylan's life is one of addiction. How the two of them deal with the issues that this creates and how love can survive the conflicts of such a relationship is well explored in the book.  

It is well worth reading. You can find it in ebook format for Kindle from Amazon and I believe it is available in other ebook formats.