Monday, January 31, 2011

Identical by Ellen Hopkins


Kaeleigh and Raeanne are 16-year-old identical twins, the daughters of a district court judge father and politician mother running for Congress. Everything on the surface of their lives seems Norman Rockwell perfect, but underneath run deep and damaging secrets.

Kaeleigh is the good girl-her father's perfect flower, something she has tried so hard to be since she was nine and he started sexually abusing her. She cuts herself and vomits after every binge, desperate to feel something normal. Raeanne uses painkillers, drugs, alcohol, and sex to numb the pain of not being Daddy's favorite. Both girls must figure out how to become whole, but how can they when their world has been torn to shreds?



Once again, Ellen Hopkins never disappoints! Identical wasn’t easy to read. It makes you work and it makes you go into a dark place that most people don’t want to go into. But one thing is for sure- Identical is amazing.
Hopkins does an amazing job developing her characters. As a reader, you always care about what happens to the characters she creates. The actual plot to this story was heartbreaking, riveting, and engrossing. Everybody should read Ellen Hopkins’ books, all of them are amazing. Many people, however may have a bit of trouble reading her books. All of them are incredibly hard to read. One of her books, I got twenty pages into and stopped reading because I couldn’t handle what was going on.


FTC- Library.

3 comments:

Liana said...

I don't know how she does it. she creates such a complete picture on the page with such few words. I love the way she makes her poetry paint a picture by how it's arranged on the page. Her poem in poem technique is awesome

Mandy said...

I know this may be hard to believe, but I have actually never read anything by Ellen Hopkins. I don't know why, but I haven't.

I know who she is, I can name off a lot of the book she's written, but I have never actually read a book by her.

I think that may have to change soon. I always hear such great things about her books.

Great review :)

Alex Platt said...

I loved this book! It was funny yet got all the details right about working mums. I also love that they cast Sarah Jessica Parker in the movie Has anyone seen the trailer yet? http://www.youtube.com/user/TheWeinsteinCompany#p/c/58D84ADD829201FF/2/bn_OrhwIidA