Review: Tilt

Tilt
Ellen Hopkins
608 pages (Hardcover)
Margaret K. McElderry Books
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Blurb:

Three teens, three stories—all interconnected through their parents’ family relationships. As the adults pull away, caught up in their own dilemmas, the lives of the teens begin to tilt….

Mikayla, almost eighteen, is over-the-top in love with Dylan, who loves her back jealously. But what happens to that love when Mikayla gets pregnant the summer before their senior year—and decides to keep the baby?

Shane turns sixteen that same summer and falls hard in love with his first boyfriend, Alex, who happens to be HIV positive. Shane has lived for four years with his little sister’s impending death. Can he accept Alex’s love, knowing that his life, too, will be shortened?

Harley is fourteen—a good girl searching for new experiences, especially love from an older boy. She never expects to hurdle toward self-destructive extremes in order to define who she is and who she wants to be.

Love, in all its forms, has crucial consequences in this standalone novel.

Review:

I've read a lot of Ellen Hopkins in the last few years, making my way through the majority of her works. I've loved most of it, rarely disliking her stories. Anyone who has read one of her books knows that she writes about issues and problems in society, showing darker aspects of life. I fully enjoy them, and Tilt wasn't really any different.

The first book I ever read by Ellen Hopkins was Impulse. I was kind of shocked by the content and how the content was portrayed. It took some adjusting for me, as I wasn't used to or originally a big fan of verse. I also had to adjust to the alternating point of views. Tilt was much like Impulse in those ways, containing verse writing and also multiple view points. But Hopkins is a master at telling stories like this. Her verse is elegant and I'm always very impressed at how well the stories flow. The multiple point-of-views only added to the effect of the story, letting the reader see connections we wouldn't know about otherwise. Because, while technically there are three stories being told, I only view it as one.

Speaking of the story . . . I can't explain how much this one spoke to me. It was all about how one lie can lead to another and how everything we do can affect those around us. It was about how people can change. I really loved reading the stories about Mikayla, Harley, and Shance. It was heartbreaking and inspiring all at once as I watched their lives spiral out of control and they tried to deal with it.

And, of course, the classic Ellen Hopkins ending. She left the story off, telling us what happened, but leaving it kind of open-ended, allowing readers to wonder what happened next. It shows readers that the characters' lives aren't finished yet. And I adored the ending.

Overall, I give it a hangover level of 5 out of 5.

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