Tricks by Ellen Hopkins

I've reviewed several Ellen Hopkins books on my blog and I know I've told you just how much I enjoy her writing style. But don't get me wrong...her topics are sometimes hard to "digest" and none of her books have left me with a warm-fuzzy feeling. Well, Tricks definitely went along the normal lines for her books.

Tricks follows 5 teenage characters who through different circumstances in their lives, all turn to prostitution as a means of survival. The story is graphic. But she makes you so attached to the characters, that you feel their pain with each heartbreaking description. I wanted to climb through the book and just hug a couple of them. That is all they wanted was to be loved. (And there were times I wanted to climb through and kill some of the supporting characters...ugh!)

It wasn't easy to read sometimes, but those harsh elements are necessary for the full impact of what is happening in the story. If you have a strong stomach and like dramatic stories, Ellen Hopkins is the author for you.

Five teens desperately seek to find their way through the darkness in Hopkins's latest epic novel in verse. Eden flees an evangelical household; Cody blocks out a family illness with gambling and sex; Whitney gives up her body in exchange for the love she finds so elusive; Seth struggles to define himself as a homosexual; and Ginger comes to terms with an awful truth about her neglectful mother. Burden after burden piles on the teens' shoulders until they resort to the unthinkable in order to survive. As they near rock bottom, their narratives begin to intersect. It is only when their paths converge that a glimmer of redemption appears out of the hopelessness.