3.5 stars. The fact is, this is my third read by Ellen Hopkins and all of the books I've read so far have affected me quite deeply. I've discovered in this past year that I really like novels in verse, I couldn't imagine it being my thing before I first picked up Burned but all the ones I've read have been all the more emotional, moving and effective because of it. Before I start on about what I don't like, I'll just say now: this book is worth your time if you are okay with the depressing, disturbing and occasionally gross.
But, there's this one thing that is the same in all of Ellen Hopkins' books, and to understand it best try and imagine the novel is two halves. Not a first half and a second half but various different parts of the novel that either fall into half one or half two. Okay, now half one is like the very first Saw film: original, shocking, disturbing, horrifying but good as well because it's so different. Half two is like the rest of the Saw films put together.
Ellen Hopkins is Jigsaw and she wants to play a game...
Half two is made up of the parts that made me think "surely Ms Hopkins is going to give these poor little buggers a break now?" I mean, honestly, how many ways can you find to torture a person? In the same way that I quickly became tired of the Saw series and it's tendency to just keep inventing new and exciting ways to horrendously kill people, there were parts where I thought Ellen Hopkins went too far. This book was 666 pages long (ominous) but really didn't need to be, the story was good, the characters were interesting... everything else that happened was like seeing how bad their lives could possibly get.
In the words of Bruce Nolan: "Ellen Hopkins is a mean kid sitting on an ant hill with a magnifying glass..."
Let's take Tony. Tony was repeatedly raped by his mother's boyfriend, he runs away and ends up popping pills and trying his hand at prostitution in order to get by, he then attempts suicide and gets carted off to Aspen Springs Psychiatric Hospital. There the doctors try and re-connect him with his long-lost father but Tony's unsure of his sexuality and his dad's some uber-religious and homophobic nutter. What next for this poor kid? Like I wouldn't have felt sorry for him had he just been raped! Ellen Hopkins doesn't know when to stop, it's like "right, he's been abused, drugged up, prostituted, discriminated against... I know, give him diarrhea as well!"
This book would be great to read if you think your life's shit. No matter how bad it gets for you, these kiddies have it so much worse. And if you think your life's worse than this, I recommend writing to Hopkins as you'll probably feature in her next book.
It's not like it isn't good. Half number one is fantastic: well-written, interesting, moving, gritty. And I can handle disturbing, it can usually get me hooked. I just feel that Hopkins uses the shock factor too much and it becomes less believable because of it.
