Tricks By Ellen Hopkins

Tricks by Ellen Hopkins is a novel in verse, like most of Ellen Hopkins books, about five teenagers dealing with the lives surrounding them. The focus in this book seems to be on sex, not only about the sex lives the teenagers have , but also the sex lives and judgments from the people around them.

The reason I started t o read this book was because I loved Identical by Ellen Hopkins. The novels in verse are very quick reads and I thought I would not be disappointed. Unfortunately, this book did not impress me as much as Identical did. I thought that having five very different characters was a little confusing to keep up with. I am bad with keeping characters straight in my head, so it was extremely hard reading this book. I had to constantly go back and see who's story I was reading.

I feel that each individual story in Tricks was very interesting. Even though I was disapointed with this book compared to Identical, it was still a good book. I would not teach it in the classroom because, like a lot of the book I have read, I feel I would have parents knocking at my door angry at me.