inlibrisveritas
Written on Apr 6, 2012
This is an adult novel, and does contain quite a bit of unapologetic language and content.
Before this book I had never read anything by Ellen Hopkins or anything like a verse novel, so this is completely new to me. Even now that I've finished it I'm not quite sure I get the entire point of it. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it. It's different and a few of the poems are really great in presentation and form, but for the most part it was just a story written in an odd way. That being said I did find this to be a really interesting experience and I'll probably pick up another Hopkins novel when I can.
Now to talk about the story...There is a lot going on within these pages and boy is it crazy. There are three women each connected but with their own stories that occasionally touch and overlap, but to me it seemed like these three women have more baggage then most people. I can't say I really liked any of them since they were so far away from being anything I can connect to but I did like that they are far from perfect and they know it. It deals with some real issues and of course they are on the taboo side. In that sense this novel accomplishes exactly what it needs to, the situations are meant to make you think. Do you like it? Have you thought about it? Does it offend you? Are you so different? It's meant to make you react to the situations and I can say that at times I had to put the book down because something would piss me off or get a bit too...out there. The reason it's only a 3 star book for is because of 1) I didn't understand the need to be in prose and 2) after awhile I was basically wondering when the next screw up was going to take place, there was almost too much going on. So I'm on the fence with it, I enjoyed it but at the same time I'm not fond of it.