Saturday, August 4, 2012

Day 407: One Hundred Book Challenge: Book Thirty


Perfect by Ellen Hopkins


I was really really into Ellen Hopkins at one point. I was even semi close with her. We talked about our books and our lives on more than one occasion. I’m not lying; I can’t make this shit up. It has been quite some time since I had last read a book by her. Her books are uniquely characterized by being written entirely in poetry and by almost never having happy endings. Ellen once explained to me her reasoning for the way she ended her stories by telling me that real life doesn’t always have a happy ending. I was awed by that answer. Her stories are also about extremely intense topics; drug abuse, suicide, teen pregnancy, and child abuse being among those topics.

Perfect is more or less the sequel to Impulse. Impulse was a book written about three teens that had attempted suicide and had been forced into a mental institution when their attempts failed. All of these teens attempted suicide over lost love, unreciprocated love or love that was never found and in the end; one of the teens succeeds in his second suicide attempt while the other two find love and salvation in one another.
Perfect is a book about the people who were in love with the teens in the first book and more or less caused them to attempt suicide.

When I started reading it, I noticed that I didn’t really enjoy it and I felt like reading the book was more of a task than a leisurely enjoyment practice. I guess I’m just not really into her books as much as I used to be, I’ve out grown them a little. This doesn’t mean this was a bad book; I just didn’t really enjoy reading it. If you’ve read Impulse, then you are going to want to read Perfect. It really gave you an insight to the other side of the stories. 

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