Tricks

Just like her other books, Tricks has real meaning to it. It's the kind that makes you reflect on your life and see how much you take for granted. It makes you hate yourself for the times that you yelled at your parents for not letting you go to a party, or not buying you clothes that "you'd die without". I really respect her and thank her for exposing these true and important topics.Tricks takes turns switching from five different perspectives: Eden Streit, Seth Parnell, Whitney Lang, Ginger Cordell, and Cody Bennett. I fell in love with every single one of these characters. They all had a different, heartbreaking story to tell and reduced me to nothing less than a pile of tears. Ellen Hopkins didn't sugar-coat anything in this book and threw in disturbing, yet necessary scenes that portrayed the seriousness of this topic. The book showed how you can jump from one path to another in the blink of an eye and end up living a life you never though could happen to you. You'll read Tricks and think, that will never happen to me, but no one can be 100% positive.It was strong, powerful, and really spoke to me. The only part that bothered me was the ending. It was sort of just left to your imagination, which I guess is ok because it's not like she could have ended it with 'and everyone lived happily ever after.' This book was very moving and I recommend it it anyone who can handle the truth.Eden Streit is the daughter of a preacher and has to be a good little Christian and follow all of her parents' orders. Eden makes the mistake of falling in love with Andrew, who her parents don't approve of, and everything goes down hill from there.Even though Eden is the opposite of me, I can relate to her and got really into her story. She felt so real to me and it felt like she was telling me her story as if she were in the room.Seth Parnell is still mourning the loss of his mother and struggling with the two parts of himslef-the straight guy around his dad, and the gay guy who has fallin in love. Even though Seth is a guy, I suffered through every painful moment he told. He was a very likeable character who really caught my attention.Whitney Lang is a pretty normal girl in the shadow of her perfect sister, with a mother who doesn't like her and a father who is only home on the weekends. Whitney was the easiest for me to relate to since she had a more normal life than the others. I instantly connected to her and it was really sad to read her drastic fall into prostitution.Ginger Cordell is my favorite character I think. She lives with her grandmother and her numerous siblings(most from different fathers). Her mom is a prostitute and is rarley around. I don't know why, but Ginger stuck out the most to me. She seemed so strong and brave to me and I cried so much while reading her story.Cody Bennett is an average guy who likes to drink and smoke(he actually reminds me of my brother minus the prostitution and smoking part). When his step-father gets fataly sick, Cody has to step up to the plate and make money the fastest way he can to support the family. Cody is a really great character and I love him for bing so selfless. Ok, being a prostitute isn't a healthy way to save your family, but he did what he had to do to help his mom.

You can read this book for FREE online at Riveted until 9/9/18! 😊That’s what I did! Naturally I loved it so much that I bought the ebook as soon as I finished reading (as well as the sequel!) and quickly re-highlighted all of my favourite first read passages before agonising about what I could write about this book without wandering into spoiler territory.Trigger warnings include sexual assault, gambling, abandonment, alcohol and drug use, murder, homophobia, seriously dodgy parenting, religion used as a weapon and probably a whole range of heartache I’ve already repressed.‘Can you tell mehow you ended up in “the business”?More mostly truth. “I never wanted to.I just didn’t know any other way to survive.”’Ellen Hopkins. Whenever I begin one of her novels I know I’m setting my heart up to be broken. It always feels as though my heart is being folded into some distorted origami design each time one of her characters is hurt or betrayed. Then the inevitable happens; one fold too many breaks me.‘When you sell your body, youalso sell what’s inside. Pieceby piece, you sell your soul.’Why do I put myself through this? Because it’s worth it! I don’t think there’s an Ellen book I’ve read where I haven’t come away changed by the experience. They’re just so real and I love that about them.Ellen opens my eyes in a way that I don’t think any other author ever has, and she does it over and over again. She takes issues I know about from personal experience, validates my feelings, shows me other perspectives and introduces me to characters who are willing to discuss what people I know don’t/won’t. She also takes issues I only know anything about from reading news stories, blogs or textbooks and gives me insights and understanding I may never have gained any other way.‘When all choice is taken fromyou, life becomes a game of survival.’Ellen breaks my heart but she also enlarges it. I come away with empathy I didn’t know I still had. I come away with the confidence that regardless of how dire your situation may look and feel there is hope.‘What is wrong withme? Why aren’t I worth loving?’Ellen opens my mind, allowing me access to people I don’t know in my life outside books. She takes topics that people discuss in terms of statistics and humanises them. Her characters stay with me when I finish reading and in the case of this book I wanted to adopt all of the kids I encountered.I found myself with a preconceived stereotypical notion that all of the characters would eventually meet one another on the streets in Vegas. I was wrong. As I began to read about the five main characters I couldn’t help wondering how their lives were going to intersect. I became attached to the five as well as others like Ginger’s Gram and younger sister Mary Ann, and Andrew, who made me want to believe in true love.Although I read the blurb prior to reading that told me otherwise I still assumed that most of the kids who feature in this book would come from extremely abusive families; probably because everyone I know personally who has been homeless has been for that reason. Again I was wrong.‘You might be surprised atwhat you can do, shouldcircumstances dictate.’I loved the book’s title even more after reading it. Tricks. I originally associated it solely with prostitution yet while I was reading I also began to associate it with the deception employed by the adults in the book.I need to know what happens to these kids so I’m diving straight into the sequel.

Tricks by Ellen Hopkins is a multiple perspective prose novel targeting hard topics such as teenage prostitution, drug use, and the negative consequences of trusting in the wrong person. Five teenagers rise as the protagonists, all from different parts of the country and different situations. Some explore their sexuality, while some are straight, and some gay. The socioeconomic ladder is also represented, with some of the teenagers being from affluent families and some being the all too common family that has to move back in with the again grandparents to be able to survive. The protagonists are Ginger, Cody, Seth, Eden, and Whitney and all of their stories share in common the age old search for freedom, trust, identity, and even love. However, this novel is not a happy go lucky fairy tale but rather the opposite. The tense and dark story lines highlight just what can happen when people are manipulated with false pretenses, whether they be false pretenses of love, trust, or even faith. This novel is about how far down a person can be thrown, and about the glimmers of hope that arise as the protagonists drag themselves back up into the sunlight.Though I appreciated the unique way the story was told, especially as it allowed the novel to become more accessible to teenage readers due to the quick reading time, the prose structure at the novel unfortunately felt forced for the majority of the novel, with only some pages throughout that really benefitted from the ability to say two things at once, such as on the intro to point of view changes, where the left out words to the right combine into a sentence that enhances the section’s reading. The prose at times can be beautifully crafted, but more often than not the prose merely works as functional, and not as moving.The actual narrative structure of the novel could also have been a bit better, as the many points of view and the quickly switching narratives at times left me, the reader, more than a bit confused. In the beginning, because of the shortness of each character’s section and the five points of view, I found it very difficult to differentiate between the characters, and I also found it very difficult to identity with the characters and to see them as well rounded. However, after the first one hundred pages or so, the novel took a turn for the better and picked up steam just as all the protagonists were really starting to unravel. The last one hundred or so pages of the novel were amazing. They were gritty, dark, and real in a way that seemed to make the narratives leap from the page and come to life in front of you, and the ending of the Tricks was all that you could potentially want in a novel with a theme as dark and real as teenage prostitution, as it left you feeling as unsure about your emotions and the life paths of the characters as those very own characters may have been feeling. The ending places you in a sense of loss and anguish, and shows you how different people can end up with different endings to their lives, even if they all fell or were dragged down to the same dark place.My qualms with the style of the novel aside, I very much enjoyed reading this text as I felt it did an excellent job as portraying a multitude of characters to offer some options of whom a reader could identity with. Though the choices may seem a bit archetypal at times (i.e. the gay farm boy or the rich girl who does not think her mother loves her) I believe it is more important to care about the diversity given in the text, which then can lead to excellent discussions on trust, sex, sexuality, family, love, etc. I also really enjoyed the fact that Hopkins wrote this book about an increasingly prevalent social issue in the modern day, and that she did so without sugar coating it, because the teens that this is happening to do not have their reality sugar coated, either. The dark subject matter is at times written with the gritty callousness of a journalist, especially when it comes to the sordid details of what the protagonists are going through, from being forced to take drugs and make porn, to having to become a stripper or a prostitute for money to help family, or to help you get away from family. All in all, I peg this novel as very important the read, as far as social issues go, and educating the younger generations about what is happening in the world, to people their age, that just might be living next door.I would recommend an age of 14+ for this novel due to the graphic and violent scenes depicted, as well as scenes of sexual nature, child abuse, rape, drug use, and all around the seedier aspects of life.

I am a huge Ellen Hopkins fan. I have devoured all of her previous novels, but for some reason Tricks has been sitting on my TBR shelf for quite some time. I picked it up on a whim a few days ago and I am so glad I did.This was an intense, emotional read that had me drawn in from the first page. I have never read anything about prostitution, espeically in YA, so was definitely wondering how Hopkins would present it. She created characters that readers could understand. While I obviously do not think they made the right decisions, they had problems in their lives that led them to make this horrible choice. There were five narrators, each who fell into prostitution for different reasons, and in different ways. I'm ashamed to say I actually always thought of prostitution as just people selling themselves on street corners. It's so much more than that, and Ellen presented it in so many ways. It is a dangerous, disgusting, and heartbreaking experience, and I was always hoping the characters would stop before they dug themselves into an impossible hole.I can't even imagine that teenagers are getting involved with prostitution today. The characters in Tricks were not just selling themselves for profit, this was survival to them. The verse writing really made this story so much more emotional and the poems that began each narration added a lot to each character.This was a graphic, horrifying, eye-opening read that will remain in your head for a long time. I applaud Ellen Hopkins for tackling such a unique, unknown issue and sharing it with the world. In the end, I cannot put into words my feelings on this book, but I definitely recommend picking up a copy. This is not for young readers though!Overall: 4.5 out of 5 stars

"I simply accept because I have no other choice."This is the forth book of Ellen Hopkins' I've read. I still stand astounded at the worlds, characters and stories she brings to life. While I wouldn't recommend this book (or any of Hopkins' for that matter) to the faint of heart, I do recommend it to anyone willing to read through the trauma that the teenagers portrayed go through. This book does contain scenes with rape/forced consent.I love Ellen Hopkins books. I do. I'm a complete fangirl for her and her work. Tricks is a prime example of why. Realistic fictions (YA and otherwise) have always appealed to me because of the lack of fluffiness, but most deal with serious taboos and topics touched upon for years (drugs, addiction, eating-disorders, self-harm, toxic relationships). While no less serious, this was different."When all choice is taken from you, life becomes a game of survival."I have personally strayed far into the boundaries of this genre to find books like this. Overall, this is a book about prostitution. As the blurb above states, the book follows the stories of five different teenagers and how they end up meeting falling into the depths of prostitution. Some you could easily tell how they were going to end up turning tricks. Others...not so much.They were all searching for something they were willing to trade everything for. Freedom. Love. Acknowledgement. Acceptance. Savior.A lot of the book was building their individual predicaments, but the last 200 or so pages were difficult to read. Ellen Hopkins has an uncanny ability to pull you into the characters, making you believe you were the one sticking the needle in your arm, being arrested, pushed down on the floor, or making the bet.It's a scary thing, not knowing the price of survival."I keep my faces in a box, stashed inside of me...Sometimes I think I have to see the real me, so I open the box, search inside. But no matter how hard I look, I can't find me."

Modern Disciples: Volume 1Once again, Ellen Hopkins exposes the gross underbelly of humanity. Tricks is a story of five teenagers who through different circumstances end up selling sex or turning tricks as the saying goes.As I read this one, I wondered if this was meant to be a cautionary tale for teens or their parents. Four of these teens end up doing what they do because of bad parenting, very bad parenting. A word to the wise, if you sell your kid for sex, or lock them up with nobody to take care of them but perverts who will take advantage of them, they will end up in the sex trade. With one of the girls, it is debatable if it was her parents who drove her to do what she did. A pimp who takes advantage of her at a vulnerable time tricks her into it. The fifth teen is the one who makes his decision on his own. He does do it out of desperation, but it was his own decisions that got him in that situation in the first place.This book is not for everyone. It deals with a very ugly truth that is out there. During the time I was reading this, I spotted a girl in the mall who was not dressed very conservatively. She had on very short shorts, and a top that could hardly be considered a bra, not something you would let your girlfriend go out in public with. I noticed that there was a man walking close behind that looked to be in his late thirties early forties. You can imagine how quickly my mind went to this book. Most of the story takes place in Vegas where you would expect this sort of thing to happen. The truth is it happens everywhere to some extent.If you don't mind reading cautionary tales about the dark side of our world, give this one a read.

"Tricks" was my second Hopkins' book. I read "Impulse" a while ago and remember devouring it in a matter of hours and loving it. I wish I felt the same way about "Tricks."Hopkins has established herself as a crusader of tough teen issues - drug use, suicide, abuse. This book was no exception. The author approached teen prostitution head-on, not sugar-coating it and without unnecessary moralizing. I applaud Hopkins for that, not many authors have guts to touch this kind of subject. As for the novel itself, it left me cold.First, I was (to my own surprise) extremely bored by the narration, so much so that I started contemplating to drop the book altogether. I might have felt this way because of the multitude of the POVs - too many switches, too little time to get attached to any character. Very often I found myself confused who was the narrator, the stories started to blend together.I also thought the book was just too wordy, too drawn out when it didn't need to be (too much info about Cody's gambling problems, for instance) and too quick or superficial when some events needed to be explored deeper. I felt I needed more to understand what drove Eden to so easily give herself over to Jerome for a couple of strawberries or how Ginger took on stripping.Some events in the book felt a bit too cliche or gimmicky - Lucas' reasons for breaking up with Whitney (because she was a virgin and not great in bed - really?) or Carl's transformation to an abusive sugar daddy in a matter of... minutes.Long story short, too often I felt I was being emotionally manipulated rather than truly touched by the characters' plight. I read another "issue book" not so long ago - "Living Dead Girl." Alice felt real to me, I never truly believed in Seth, Cody, Whitney, and Eden, only Ginger and her story had some authenticity.The story picked up significantly in the last 100 pages or so, once everybody hit the rock bottom. Those pages were great, gritty and disturbing and painful to read. But it took way too long to get there and by that point in the story I was already tired of the book.Will I recommend this book? Absolutely, the subject of it is important and has to be brought to light. Is this the best written book about teen prostitution? I don't think so.

I went into this book blind. This was a first for me by this author but definitely not the last. The eloquently written poetry and the real rawness you felt of what lead each character down the path they went down. The narrators did a phenomenal job bringing each character off the page and into your hearts. I cannot praise how much I enjoyed, though extremely heartbreaking story. I highly recommend this book, please make sure to check the TW as there are some extremely heavy topics.

When I went to pick this book up at the library, I was surprised at how small and fat it was. Great, just what I need…a 600+ page book and hardly enough time to read. When I opened up the book and glanced at the first few pages, I was delighted and shocked the margins were so wide and there were no more than seven words per line. Then I thought, “wait a minute, this is freakin’ poetry!” Since I read so little poetry and never developed an appreciation for it, I left the library slightly disappointed. Well, Tricks isn’t exactly poetry, but a novel written in verse. Once I started reading, I couldn’t put the book down. Dishes were piling up, dust bunnies were fighting back, and I was late to work.Tricks is a story about five deeply troubled teenagers, all from different areas, backgrounds, and family situations who end up falling into prostitution.Each character has a story to tell. These stories are brief, and jump from one character to the next and back again. At the beginning, I was a little frustrated at how short their stories were and was afraid that I would not be able to distinguish one character from the next. It turns out there was no need to worry. Hopkins does a brilliant job of infusing her characters with life, personality and emotions. As I continued to read, and the characters’ situations became more harrowing, I found the stories very intense and was relieved there was some separation. I was also surprised at how much I enjoyed the writing style. These stories told in verse allowed me to get into the minds and feelings of the characters without extraneous detail, and helped me feel a deeper connection with them.Tricks broke my heart and made my stomach churn. The stories were gripping, painful, and honest. My own teenage years, painful memories, wrong choices, and difficulty with parents all came flooding back. I wish my own parents could have read a book like this, just to see how their own behavior and actions could irreparably damage a child’s life.

This book is brutal. It doesn't shy away from the horrors of teen prostitution -- which I applaud Hopkins for, as she has wrote a painfully real portrayal of what some teenagers/children have experienced and are experiencing around the world.It sheds a light on a subject rarely talked about or acknowledged in today's society or any society for that matter.This is an immensely dark read with scenes that shocked me and stayed with me long after reading. The emotional state of all 5 characters was written superbly, leaving tears in my eyes in many parts of the novel. Ellen's writing is beautifully lyrical and adds so much to the story. Hopkins writes this story with realism, demonstrating how and why each character turns to selling their body.The themes of religion, sexuality, homophobia, relationships (parental, family & romantic), substance abuse, poverty, sex, love and of course prostitution were all handled seamlessly by Hopkins.This story explores these serious themes brilliantly with caution, while also questioning what it means to love & what love is.

Great book! Love this author!

Ellen Hopkins did an amazing job once again. A brilliant read you will not be disappointed. I couldn’t put the book down

...aber es wird von Seite zu Seite besser!Die Story entwickelt sich rasant und spätestens ab dem ersten Drittel kann einen nichts mehr halten. Es ist sehr ergreifend und spannend geschrieben, und über die Verstrickungen der Geschichten musste ich manchmal schmunzeln. Viva Las Vegas!Erwähnen wollte ich noch kurz, dass die Angabe auf dem Umschlag "one gay, four straight" nicht ganz stimmt ;)Das Ende finde ich nicht ganz zufriedenstellend. 50 Seiten mehr hätten es doch sein dürfen.