Perfect (Impulse, #2) in Crazy Challenge Connection

Nov 04, 2011 Kate rated it liked it

I love Ellen Hopkins. She is seriously one of my favorite authors. She choose issues... important issues, and she writes about them in a way that is engaging to teens and young adults. The first book I read by Ellen Hopkins was Identical and it was seriously trippy. When I picked up my first Ellen Hopkins books, I did not have very high expectations. For one thing, I am not a fan of poetry, and her books are written in verse. And yet, as I read it, it did not read like it was written in verse. I I love Ellen Hopkins. She is seriously one of my favorite authors. She choose issues... important issues, and she writes about them in a way that is engaging to teens and young adults. The first book I read by Ellen Hopkins was Identical and it was seriously trippy. When I picked up my first Ellen Hopkins books, I did not have very high expectations. For one thing, I am not a fan of poetry, and her books are written in verse. And yet, as I read it, it did not read like it was written in verse. It read like a normal book, just formatted differently. That is something I really enjoyed about her books.

All that said, I must confess that this was not my favorite Ellen Hopkins book. I just couldn't find myself really caring about any of the characters. I had trouble liking any of them and more over, I didn't always agree with the things I knew she was pushing us, the audience, into thinking. I found the various romance aspects very hard to accept and thus hard to buy into. [SPOILER: i.e. One of the characters goes from being totally in love with someone to being in a new relationship in the matter of a couple days. I found this incredibly difficult to buy into].

The second thing I found difficult about this book was it seemed to me as thought the author would abruptly change things and I felt myself getting whiplash somethings. The ending felt altogether abrupt and felt like she had reached her page quota and had to abruptly wrap up all the story lines. I did not feel as though the characters had really, emotionally, reached where they ended. That disappointed me.

As a final note of mild negativity [this contains a mild spoiler so please skip this paragraph if you don't want to know] on of the character experiences a sexual orientation change (I am not quite sure how that should be worded). I am fine with that. That is not what I am complaining about. What bothered me in this event is that this characters partner was kind of not understanding about the difficulty of coming out. After they had only just been seeing each other for a couple of weeks (it could have been a little bit longer but it is hard to gauge time passage in this book) they were pressuring the main character to come out of the closet. Coming out of the closet is difficult and if you only discover your sexual orientation recently, it isn't right to be pressured into coming out on anything but your own time.

Now all that aside, this was still a very good book. Ellen Hopkins is very skill at getting to the heart of the issue and addressing. Perfection is something that most of us strive for, and sometimes we let that destroy us. The journey to the unattainable perfection is often lead with self-destructive things... drugs, alcohol, eating disorders, and thoughts of suicide. Many of us have the desire to please others... this goes hand in hand with the search for perfections. We think that if we can only be good enough at this then they will love us or want to be friends with us or they will be happy with us. But that isn't always the case. Those who truly love us love us despite our imperfections.

Ellen Hopkins really brought to life the search for each of the main four characters to be perfect. The desire for perfection manifests itself in so many ways... destructive ways. Because the truth is that no one and nothing will ever truly be perfect, and Ellen Hopkins show us the truth of that reality. We should always strive to be the best that we can be, but the truth is that we will never be fully perfect.

Rating: 3.5/5 ...more

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Jul 16, 2019 Jessie Marie rated it it was ok

Shelves: chunkster, 2019-read

More like 3.5 but rounded down to suit GR ratings.

I dunno. This one did not hit me as hard as Impulse, it's companion. Either I wasn't in the right headspace for it, or it just didn't grab me. Some of the events seemed more for shock value than actual character driven substance. Resolution? I couldn't find it. I feel like race and sexuality were played off as very stereotypical, surface level, and misrepresented.

I won't, however, discredit Ellen Hopkins writing style. It's fabulous. It makes it ...more

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Nov 02, 2012 TheReadingKnitter/ Kasey rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: library, 2015

Overall this book was pretty good. I was thinking it'd tie in more from the first book but it was okay that it didn't. Jenna got on my nerves and I saw the twist with her coming before it happened. ...more

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