edited review.

Ellen Hopkins has written several books that I know of. There was crank, burned, glass, identical, fallout, and impulse. I have read all of them, I’m reading impulse and I haven’t read identical. Crank and glass are centered on the drug, love, and sex life of the main character Kristina who has 3 children. In fallout her children go one with their lives similar to hers after her transition to bad girl. Burned was about another girl who was sent away from her Mormon household for assault to her aunt’s house. They are all very similar, the one I’m reading now is most like fallout. In impulse the kids are neglected by their parents, specifically their druggy or cruel mothers and walking out fathers. The fallout is most like impulse of all of them because it also has a 3 person POV. This has 2 of one gender and 1 of another. The difference is fallout is a continuation of the lives of a druggie mother while impulse starts off with the whole drugs fixation. In fallout the 3 characters have problems like lies, drug use, sexual abuse, cheating, and illegal stuff or rebellion. In impulse each character has their own problem which links together by a suicide attempt at all 3 of them. Tony had drug use problems and father problem; in the book often we question his sexuality because he has a liking for Vanessa. Vanessa was into self mutilation and has a schizophrenic mom. Conner had problems with dating an older woman and competing for Vanessa’s attention. Patterns in the book usually include: drug use, religion, sex, rebellion, and false illusions of love. Her books also don’t usually have 100% happy endings. In burned someone lost their child, in crack someone got raped, and in glass someone got sent to prison. It is a reasonable idea that Ellen Hopkins wrote these books to appeal to a more pessimistic crowd since very few things is this book are optimistic. As I have gone on farther than before I realized that these three characters are all linked together. In fallout they are more distant. This is important because then it’s easier to make the connection between them all.

Purpose: I’m sure that Ellen Hopkins’s purpose was to give readers a taste of the hard and real life. With many twist and turns in each one of her books she takes strips of real lives, real stories and combines it with the main characters common misfortune that she/he usually suffers. Most of her books have characters that practice at some point self hate and become liars and players. But by the end of each book the problem they had at first is blown up of destroyed completely.