Perfect

A story folded up messily into a paper airplane...

Years ago I realized I don't read Hopkin's books to like the characters, I read them to watch awful people burn and suffer. Her books are a series of unfortunete events and awful people mixed with some decent or good people. This one is very much an issue of caring as this book focuses on rich, mostly-white kids getting away with too much and their parents who are focused on reputation and wealth pulling strings and making excuses. There's a lot about the rich to not like, the higher class and the way they raise their kids, but this book nails it in making almost every parent so disgusting and awful that I want them all to burn.

Hopkins delivers a wonderful tale of how parents can ruin show more kids and pressure can make everyone into monsters. These characters are lacking in my eyes, nothing compared to some of her other books. There are sparks or pieces of more to them, but even the prose they are presented in feels like it lacks her usual spark. It was sluggish to read this book, and by the middle I only kept reading to watch them all burn and it go to hell.

Some of the characters really drag things down, Jenna's motivations are severely flawed, starved for attention yet never happy when she has it. Kendra is over the top and should be dead halfway through the book, seriously, she should be dead not stumbling. It's unlikely by the end that Kendra or Sean will actually be alive, and honestly I couldn't care less about Sean's fate.

Cara soars but also flounders with her awful experiences and lack of peace, Andre is mostly a solid character with his African heritage being shoved down his throat to the point who he dates reflects on if he's being true to it or not(with undertones of if a black man dates a white woman he's betraying his race, wth), and Sean...

Sean is a control freak, a maniac. His sentences are all about how he's planned not only his future but Cara's. How he will destroy her if she leaves, kill men she dates if not disfigure them, and corral her towards the future he wants most. Sean is a disgusting character who gets worse and worse and seems to need Conner's fate more than Conner.

Speaking of Conner, having forgotten Impulse a lot. Conner is the perfect example of a character who is good, and he gets the hell out of this book and stays out.

Really this book is a three star to three-point-five star read. It's not awful but it involves a lot of alcoholism, child grooming, child abuse, rape, date rape, substance abuse, and drugs. A lot of the handling is bad, Sean should be in jail or arrested, and Cara should be getting therapy – a lot of it. Conner deserved better parents, hell, everyone in this book but maybe Andre deserved better parents. show less

What does it mean to be perfect? The definition is as varied as the individuals trying to define it. Yet, in all instances, a person’s desire for perfection can lead to the exact opposite. Such is the lesson learned in Ellen Hopkins’ Perfect. Told through four different narrators each with their own professed goals, the drive to be perfect is pervasive no matter socioeconomic class or experiences. Readers from all backgrounds will be able to relate to at least one of the narrators. It is this personal connection that builds between the reader and at least one narrator which drives home the message of the infeasibility of perfection and the damage that ensues when trying to achieve it. As someone struggling with a mild form of show more Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Perfect struck a chord and mirrored some of my own inabilities to let go of the unattainable. Ellen Hopkins’ style is breezy, and she successfully sustains the four distinct voices of the narrators. More importantly, she maintains an appropriate level of gravitas for the situations described. The resulting novel is one that is shocking, poignant, and hits close to home. show less

I think what I like so much about Hopkins' books is the brutality of the bluntness. These are not lighthearted stories - they're sad and depressing and deal with kids too young in very adult situations. For someone who's never experienced these things personally but seen friends who have, it's fascinating. There are some truly amazing life lessons to be found here.

Ellen Hopkins is a genius! I LOVED this book. At first I wasn't sure about it, I thought I would say I liked its predecessor (Impulse) better. I was way wrong. Ms. Hopkins delivers a poignant story about four teenagers striving to be perfect. When each character begins to "talk", Ms. Hopkins tells two stories on one page. The skill it takes to do this amazes me.

Cara, Conner's (who we met in Impulse) twin, strives to live up to her parents expectations. She feels she must have perfect grades, get into the perfect school, do all the "right" things in order to gain her parents love/approval. Unlike Conner, she does not buckle under the expectations. She decides to make her own definition of what perfect means. This, of course is easier show more said than done.

Sean, is a baseball player looking to "score" with Cara and on the baseball field. He is looking to be perfect in order to get a baseball scholarship to college. He is a bit of a jerk and I did not like him very much.

Kendra wants to be the next super model. Who she sees in the mirror and who she really is are two very different people. She is looking outside of herself for approval and feels like she cannot be perfect unless she fits into a size 2 or changes her physical appearance.

Andre is not sure what it is that defines who he is. He is struggling with who he wants to be as opposed to who his parents want him to be. His father puts a lot of pressure on Andre to go to college and Andre is not even sure he wants to go. In the end, Andre knows what he has to do. I loved seeing the progression of each characters' lives and whether or not they choose to keep on with their quest for perfection. I also loved how Ms. Hopkins intertwined the story in Impulse with the story in Perfect.

I think this should be required reading for high schoolers as well as parents of high schoolers. show less

Perfect. Is there really such a thing?

Perfection is a really important subject surprisingly enough. People try in so many different ways to obtain it but in the end, its impossible. In this book, we met Cara, Connor's sister, Sean, Cara's boyfriend, Kendra, Cara's friend and Connor's ex, and Andre, who dated Kendra's sister.

As much as I loved the book, I feel like the only characters who really got a satisfying ending was Cara and Andre. Not that I mind. I loved these two characters. Cara was ready to throw away her parents ideals because she wanted love. She wasn't going to let her mother's "perfection" ruin her like it did her brother and despite all the pain she went through - and boy oh boy did she go through a lot - she got the show more love she wanted and I'm happy that she really is proud of who she is.

I love Andre as well because of several reasons. One, he's an actually decent guy. He really cared about Kendra's sister ( Whose name escapes me right now so I'll call her K.S. ) and it was so great watching him fall in love. Two, he's black. We need diversity in YA and it was great having a MAIN character black. Three, he wanted to dance. He believed in his art so good for him. I honestly thought K.S. treated him like shit and he deserved better. SO much better.

Kendra and Sean? Not a lot to say about them. Kendra is anorexic and believes that surgery will make her perfect. But at the end, nothing really changed. She was still insecure and her parents didn't help her. I felt unsatisfied because she needed help. And no one did. But Sean? FREAKING SCUMBAG! I am so angry he didn't go to jail because I don't care that he did steroids and he had his problems with his family: the stuff he did was HORRIBLE. How anyone can do what he did was evil. He doesn't deserve what he got.

Overall, I loved this book. Perfection is impossible and some people ended up happy, some didn't. I'm wondering if there will be a third book but either way, I'm satisfied.

Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars

Extra:
Impulse was the first book I ever read by Ellen Hopkins and I hated it. Honestly, I thought the ending was depressing and the characters were blech. But I kept reading her stories because I saw something amazing in her writing. And thank god I did. I LOVE Ellen Hopkins. She is constantly challenged for the dark twisted YA she writes and people always challenge her. But what she writes is powerful, important stuff.

I'll admit I was nervous to read this because of how I reacted to the first one but I'm proud to say I enjoyed it. A lot. I can't even believe how quickly I finished this book. Long story short, I feel it is important for EVERYONE to read at least one of Ellen Hopkin's books because they help people. Seriously. show less

I don't claim to know much about poetry but I don't think this was any good. There were some poems that were kind of clever in their formatting (the first poem every time the character POV changed), but for the majority of these, I don't see why they couldn't have just been written as prose. As it is, the poems felt like poorly-written, stream-of-consciousness style paragraphs that the author then broke into separate lines at arbitrary intervals... Perhaps I am showing my lack of understanding of poetry here, I don't know. I don't understand why Ellen Hopkins' books are so raved about; I don't think this was actually well-written at all.

Anyway, I breezed through the first half of this (it's really easy to read) but felt it really show more dragged in the second half. There was just so much drama; I felt exhausted reading it all. show less

This is my first Ellen Hopkins book that I've actually finished so bear with me.

It's the senior year for four high school students and they all face different problems and pressures from peers, family, and friends. Each one has something they want to reflect on and we follow them as they live their day to day lives. Cara is a closeted lesbian, Sean is taking athletic performance drugs (steroids), Kendra is anorexic, and Andre has a secret talent for modern dance. They're all connected one way or another and it's interesting trying to connect the dots.

Once upon a time when I was about 12, I tried to read a Hopkins book but because it was so graphic to my innocent little eyes I felt guilty every time I read it away from the eyes of a show more mature adult because I still didn't know any better. And also I wasn't a fan of the whole free verse thing. But now I get it, it's a way to get straight to the point. Plus now I know things...

I didn't like this book. I didn't like anyone really. Then as I read on I realized how much I would have liked to read about Connor and his whole deal and to my surprise: this is a freaking companion book to his story! So I'm totally going to go look for Impulse. I also didn't like how half the cast's story revolved around Connor, a character that wasn't even there. Cara was her own person yet her problems were still entwined with his. Kendra was in love with the guy to the point where when she was dumped she felt like it was because of how 'fat' she was. Sean was Cara's boyfriend and he was basically a prop to build sympathy for Cara because he had no personality outside of being a drug addict in denial that he was a druggie. Andre could have been interesting but he was so pathetic following Kendra's little sister around like a little puppy that I lost interest in him too. The whole thing was okay but the ending was so anti-climatic that I almost ripped out the pages because I was angry that there was no ending.

Since this book is a companion piece I already know the ending to Impulse but I still want to read because I want to know who TF is Connor and maybe I'll find better characters in that book. show less