Friday #56, #14 Impulse by Ellen Hopkins

The Friday #56 is a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice. Join in every Friday and share an excerpt from a book you've been reading. Here are the rules:

• Grab a book 
• Turn to page 56 or 56% in your e-reader
• Find any sentence (or a few, don't spoil it) 

**Be sure to post the links to your Friday #56 below!

Happy Reading!

So this week in honor of the Mental Health Awareness Readathon I will be taking an excerpt from Ellen Hopkins Impulse. If you did not know Hopkins writes in free verse so her books are fairly easy to get through; however, they often cover a wide range of difficult topics. One of the challenges of the readathon is to read a book that focuses on a main character that suffers from mental health issues/illnesses. This book contains three teenage characters whose lives become intertwined when they spend some together at a psychiatric facility. It's a re-read for me, but I haven't read it since high school and I must say I'm really loving it. It's a dark novel, but it is realistic and it clues individuals into what its like to have a mental illness and how difficult it can be to function from day to day. 

"What's up, people? Usually you won't shut up. Now you've got nothing to say just because a pretty girl walks through the door?

Well, that woke them up! Everyone looks simply
stunned, including Dr. Boston.
Is it because I'm anything
but pretty? Or less likely a reason?"

 I wrote the quote down in verse form exactly how it appears in the book that way you could get a feel for how the book is written. This quote doesn't exactly illustrate how dark the book is, but it does showcase the introduction of the character Vanessa as she goes to first therapy session. I'm loving and definitely recommend checking out Hopkins' books if you haven't done so already.

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

Vanessa is beautiful and smart, but her secrets keep her answering the call of the blade.

Tony, after suffering a painful childhood, can only find peace through pills.

And Conner, outwardly, has the perfect life. But dig a little deeper and find a boy who is in constant battle with his parents, his life, himself.

In one instant each of these young people decided enough was enough. They grabbed the blade, the bottle, the gun -- and tried to end it all. Now they have a second chance, and just maybe, with each other's help, they can find their way to a better life -- but only if they're strong and can fight the demons that brought them here in the first place