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 me how 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, you also sell what’s inside. Piece by 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 from you, 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 with me? 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 at what you can do, should circumstances 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.

This book provides a roller coaster ride of emotion by painting the highs and lows of life with excellent character studies. The cultural cliches speak to the books popularity, but they also are reasons why this culture creates problems instead of solving problems so I will expose the ugly truth. The major problem is people do not teach or learn the science of human behavior, thus we do not use the behavioral methodologies documented in the book The Reluctant Alliance Between Behaviorism And Humanism by Bobby Newman and improve the human condition, instead many reinforce cultural assumptions such as this book does. Didn't we see the problems prohibition caused? Criminalizing non-violent behavior causes more problems than it solves. People do not stop doing behaviors because of laws, they avoid the laws. Saying your protecting people by making laws is fascism. Fascism sucks! Instead of accepting that prostitution should be illegal we should shout, give me liberty or give me death, criminalization is stupid so we should not criminalize non-violent criminal behavior. Plus, sex is pleasurable and monogamy is not human with people I encounter. Why does prostitution lead to degradation, excessive drug use, violence AND other unhealthy behaviors. Criminalization and religious dogma. Where is prostitution healthiest? Where it is legal. Why is prostitution considered dirty, repulsive and disgusting. Religious dogma. St. Augustine had bad sexual consequences so he demonized sex and his outrage fueled religious dogma. Religious dogma allowed people to pile on and they use this cruel tool to make people feel guilty for many pleasurable or harmless behaviors. Religion is the root of all evil, it controls people by making them feel guilty for enjoying themselves instead of making natural behavior healthy. Telling people they are sinners so they don't revolt or rock the boat is a sin AND even worse they tell you religion is love. Therefore, people don't see the problems their slave owners perpetuate and just accept atrocity after atrocity. Religion is a cruel tool used to perpetuate evil agendas and outlawing prostitution is just one. Thus, this book should expose the problems created by religion and not continue reinforcing the system. This book and culture never questions the system and instead blames natural behavior such as prostitution, like those in power control popular people to do. I mean the ignorance and propaganda of people saying they are protecting you so they can easily enact fascism while telling you they are the only defenders of liberty should not be tolerated. Sex is pleasure and paying for pleasure is healthy and natural. Making it illegal causes the problems. In addition, the religious institution of marriage is another source of religious dogma that contributes to the outrage over natural behavior prostitution. Reinforcing these institutions goes against human behavior while natural behavior is demonized so we get hypocrisy, jealousy, violence, fighting and unhealthy behavior after unhealthy behavior do to religious dogma and that needs to be fought, not embraced. Beware of dogma. We need to eliminate marriage, not criminalize it and certainly not glorify it. We are all completely unique individuals that all have different experiences with different consequences that have a cumulative effect. We also are all born with different brains. We are more unique then snowflakes. Thus, the subjective judgmental prick behavior we reinforce in this culture is dangerous and needs top be eliminated, not reinforced. I mean how is the golden rule, do unto others as they would want to be done unto, selfish subjectivity, instead of do unto others as they would want to be done unto. Everything we do is the opposite of healthy and assuming it is "good" makes an ass out of you and me. I mean this author still assumes we will our behavior. There is no self initiating force in the universe, much less the brain. People are just told they control themselves because that way they are easily controlled. That way people never question the system, they just blame the individual. Therefore, when it is obvious of the contingencies people have to behave the way they do, people in this culture and this author just say they have free will so it is up to them. NO! People don't have free will. When this culture reinforces this delusion, people are made to ignore natural contingencies so when people have the correct circumstances to be rich or poor they credit themselves for getting rich and blame inner city people that don't have the right tools to overcome their situation for being poor, the lottery system stays in place AND is miserable for everyone. Nobody has ever seen a will. Thoughts do not cause behavior, they are effects. Causes happen 100% of the time. We have all thought we would do something and done something else. We have all thought something and done nothing. If natural selection selected us to think before behaving there could never be a mutation for every thought and select different thoughts for different people. Natural selection could not select thoughts to cause behavior, what it did select for was superstitious behavior (coincidental reinforcement). Thoughts are given causal effect because once in a while they are paired with behavior AND confident behavior has been selected to attract mates and pass on your DNA so we think we are right even when we are wrong. Therefore, this culture and this book reinforce being wrong (LOL). This had healthy short term effects, but in the long term we are paying the consequences. Therefore, Ellen your characters did not will themselves not to throw up, they didn't throw up because the circumstances of their body and situation determined that they didn't throw up at that time. Nobody has ever seen a will cause behavior, but people love all the cultural presuppositions that are wrong so unhealthy behavior is inevitable, but we must be aware of the truth so we can adapt. Thus, we must embrace science and ignore the superstitions used in this culture and as a by-product this book. This author reinforces many cultural presuppositions SO read this book, it has many fascinating ways of articulating life as we know it WHILE ignoring the regurgitated cultural assumptions, because superstitious behavior makes life suck!

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."

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.

"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.

Disturbing. I am a fan of Ellen Hopkins writing style and story lines. I loved the Crank series. The book Tricks takes the world of drugs and sex and predators on our teenagers to a descriptive sad place. I know it's fiction but I believe each of those kids' stories have happened to countless teens all over. I used to like going to Las Vegas but not so sure anymore after reading this book. I'm a parent of teenage boys and it's sad to know how the parents' lack of involvement and critical judgment of their kids contributes to pushing the kids onto the slippery slope. I hate the idea that this stuff happens so routinely to our teenage kids but it's a sign of a good author that gets their readers to feel so much. It also was a good chance to reflect on my own parenting style and make sure I don't shut out my kids, no matter what they are going through. Great book.

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.

Part of a trilogy..they are very well written. But dont read them all together. The style of writing is fast its like scrolling... I had to retrain myself to read regular novels and get my attention span back

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.