This review is spoiler-free!
Triangles by Ellen Hopkins
Genres: Adult, Poetry, Contemporary
Release Date: October 18th 2011 by Atria Books
Format: Hardcover, 529 pages
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
Find it here: Goodreads
Long time, no book review! Sorry about that, been kind of out of the book-review mindset, but I’d like to pick it back up again. Starting with this gem, which I was originally pretty excited to read, since I’m not prone to picking up Adult fiction. Unfortunately, this just happened to remind me of why that is.
So, you’ve seen my rating already, that comes first in the review, along with the information. I didn’t really like this book. At all. Even though I tend to enjoy Ellen Hopkins works as a whole, that apparently only applies to her YA works.
Why?
Well, it’s not that I wasn’t interested.
… Okay, it’s because I was only kind of interested, but that’s not the only reason. I was interested in some parts of the story, and most of the time it tended to be in Marissa’s parts when she brings up Shelby. Which I contribute to having already read “”” and knowing what happened at the end. I went into the book interested in seeing the same story from the parents of the children I’d already read about, but … I was pretty bored with what I found once I picked the book up.
Frankly, I attribute all of the boredom to the fact I failed to connect with a single one of the characters I was reading in the perspective of. I’m in my mid-twenties, I have no children, no spouse, none of the issues these women in the story have. I’ve never had to think about what my husband is doing, what my child is doing, if I made a mistake in where I took my life. I’m not exactly looking forward to any of those, should they happen (I’m hoping they won’t), but, right now? I don’t even really want to read about them, nor the women they’re effecting. Again, Marissa’s was the most interesting simply because I was curious about Shelby.
That’s not to say someone who also hasn’t experienced any of the plot points couldn’t enjoy it–I’m sure many have. I just didn’t, and I guess I need to connect with the characters in some way more than I realized in order to enjoy the story. Or maybe I just didn’t like the story as a whole, because, really, I was just so bored.
I also had some trouble here and there figuring out who was whom, and it wasn’t until the end that I was able to tack down who had what name and whose husband was who, who had which kids, etc. I blame that on my lack of ability to connect and overall disinterest, it probably isn’t as hard for someone who’s more into the story itself.
Overall, definitely not my favorite of Hopkins’ work. I can’t say I won’t read another Adult novel of hers (does she have more?), but I’ll definitely be sticking to the YA side of things until I’m ready to attempt it again.
Thanks for reading!
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