“Tricks” By: Ellen Hopkins Susan Hollis

Genres The genre of “Tricks” would definitely be fictitious freelance poetry.

Major Characters “Tricks” has five teenage narrators. –Ginger Cordell: Ginger has a troubled home life with her (hooker!) mother never being home, she is always taking care of her four younger siblings. Ginger comes to hate her mother throughout her life, and learns to appreciate her grandmother and best friend, Alex. –Whitney Lang: Whitney is always living in her older sister, Kyra’s, shadow. She never feels in place with her family. With her family, and love life slowly deteriorating, Whitney makes some harsh decisions. –Eden Streit: Eden was born into a very faithful Catholic family her father is the town pastor), and she can’t stand it. It seems anything unfaithful she does is very wrong in both her parents, and the congregation’s eyes. Eden struggles for her parents acceptance, however, she can’t have acceptance when she falls in love. –Cody Bennett: Cody’s father left him, his mother, and younger brother, Cory to fend for themselves. When Cody’s stepdad becomes sick, more conflict is brought into the family. Cody usually helps look after his thirteen year old brother who’s out getting wasted drunk, and breaking into houses. Cody struggles with his love life as well. –Seth Parnell: Seth has always doubted his homosexuality, denying it towards his father. Seth knows that his father would never accept him. Seth eventually meets his man, Loren, but when Loren moves away, Seth can’t handle life without him.

Major Conflicts Even though the narrators live all over the country, they all have something in common; the struggle to find freedom, safety, friends, family acceptance, and love

Review What I liked within “Tricks”: How the book showed how five very different people dealt with their family, friends, acceptance, and love conflicts. The freelance format too. What I didn’t like within “Tricks”: The book was very hard to keep up with being there are five narrators, I was always getting confused with each narrator’s story.

Recommendations I would recommend this book for all high school students and even young adults in college. This book was very easy to connect to, and I think mostly everyone else would be able to find a connection too.

About the author Ellen Hopkins –New York Times Best-selling author –Author of Crank, Glass, Burned, Impulse, Fallout, and Identical. –Hopkins has written all of her books in freelance prose. –Hopkins lives in Carson City, Nevada with her family