Burned

In this book from Ellen Hopkins, I was kinda disappointed amongst other things.

Don't get me wrong it was a decent book, but I can't put my finger on it, just something about. Anyway, once again it is written in poetic form, but it's not as bad as Crank. Yes, it is still for a more mature audience but its not as dark and sinister. Another thing is that in Crank, the poetic shapes she created were more vivid and alive in the text, but in Burned it was just like she was just putting it in poetry form just to do it. I don't know, maybe it was just me, not the book. But I seriously don't think so.

The central story of Burned consists of another girl protagonist, Pattyn. She's a Mormon whom doesn't think women should just bow at the feet of men and do as they are told. She believes that women deserve a place in the world just as any other man does. Silly little women(just kidding). In believing this she strives to do things she not permitted to do by her family, which consists of about seven siblings, a lazy mother, and an abusive father. One includes her getting with a boy and doing inappropriate things. The town soon knows of what they have done and it gets back around to her family due to gossip. Decisively, her family disapproves. She is then sent off to live with her Aunt J and finds retribution with her and a boy named Ethan.

That's pretty much it in a nutshell, without giving too much information away(I hate when people do that). See, the thing that really drove me towards Hopkins books is that they were dark and sinister. Don't get me wrong, this is still a little dark, but it wasn't what I was looking for. In the end this book gets a three out of five stars.

544 pages