Impulse

by Ellen Hopkins

"Sometimes you don't wake up. But if you happen to, you know things will never be the same.

Three lives, three different paths to the same destination: Aspen Springs, a psychiatric hospital for those who have attempted the ultimate act -- suicide."

Impulse is written in verse, and this structure within a novel was new to me. I was uncertain if I would enjoy it. Looking back on the story now, however, the thoughts and images that I have of it likely hold no difference to the ones I would have acquired if the novel had been written in prose. In other words, Ellen Hopkins was able to create events vividly in my mind, to fully develop her characters, all in verse form.

What I really enjoyed about this book is the fact that each of the main characters had their own structures in the writing style, and that each of these mirrored their personalities, and some of the troubles they had gone through. The emotional trauma experienced by the three is terrible, heart breaking, disturbing; and the rawness of it all, the truth that Hopkins revealed free of censorship, was shocking. I appreciated it.

There aren't many teen books out there like Impulse, or at least there aren't many that I know of. I think real issues like these are often tabooed, and literature allows them to materialize free of society's inhibitions. I think these books can really help people.

I found the ending abrupt and dark; I didn't see how it connected to the development of the story. And yet, perhaps, in it, is a statement about the ephemerality of things.

4/5 stars.