****SPOILER ALERT****** 

Reading Response to Impulse By Ellen Hopkins.

          Impulse  is a story that tracks the lives of three teenagers, with very different lives, who end up in the same mental hospital. Vanessa is the pretty, charming daughter of an army dad and a bipolar mother. Tony is a bisexual juvenile delnquent who spent half his life on the street, and Connor is the priveleged, handsome boy who spent half his life trying to live up to his sister's standards and his parent's cold expectations of him. These are three teenagers who end up at the same mental hospital, all for different reasons, but end up best friends.  This book, Impulse, shows that it doesn't matter where you come from, your problems can connect you with everyone around the world.
      I have confusing feelings towards this book. While her books are very "teenage-y," they can have some beautiful language and themes i can connect to. So this book didn't quite live up to the standards i had set for it. But while it wasn't quite as geniusly written as Identical, I still really enjoyed the underlying theme that we're all connected through our problems. In this book Vanessa, Connor and Tony are all connected throught the facct that they can't stand living their lives. For Vanessa, it's the overwhelming guilt she feels at her mother's death and her bipolar disorder.  For Connor, it's all the days he's plastered a smile when he really wanted to die inside. For Tony, it's the terrible past that keeps on flashing back to him. Though they all deal with their self-loathing in different ways, it's their problems that connect them.

            Vanessa keeps coming back to the razor blade because that's the way she deals with the depressive side of her manic-depressive, when she "sinks all the way into blue." Vanessa is attracted to danger, that's why she lusts after Connor and eventually falls for the bad boy Tony.  Although her depression and bad qualities shouldn't connect them all, it was part of the reason that they formed such a strong bond in the first place.  But i can't help thinking that it's part of the reason that Connor eventually killed himself.  In the last chapters of his life, Vanessa and Tony had noticed that Connor had stopped taking his pills, grew "tense and stiff-shouldered when [Connor] saw [them] snuggling".  Although Vanessa and Tony's relationship might have contributed to his sucide, Vanessa and Tony also helped him realize what his life was really about.

         The plot to this story disappointed me.  I mean, we spend the whole book anticipating the recovery of the three protagonists, and smack, at the end Connor's dead.  The book keeps on showing flashbacks, but does nothing to connect it to the future.  I think that is something that is required in stories, if you show flashbacks, they can't be meaningless. They have to connect to the innermost feelings of the characters, not just show

what a terrible life they have.

        However, this book still had essential qualities that made me appreciate it alot.  :)  You really felt for the characters.  Although I don't have any severe depression-y stuff, and y I can connect to the feeling of self-loathing that these characters have.  In a less mild sense, i know exactly how it feels to have to live up to high standards, yourself and others.  I know how it feels to need to get away from things.  And what makes the book even more special is exactly what my thesis statement is about: The characters can all connect with eachother through their problems, and so can i think the readers.  It's easy to connect through problems, it gives you a more full sense of their personality, makes you feel like you know them on a deeper level.  I don't know if it's a good thing or not that we find it easy to connect to others through our problems...