Perfect by Ellen Hopkins

Perfect by Ellen Hopkins
"Everyone has something, someone, somewhere else that they'd rather be. For four high-school seniors, their goals of perfection are just as different as the paths they take to get there.

Cara's parents' unrealistic expectations have already sent her twin brother Conner spiraling toward suicide. For her, perfect means rejecting their ideals to take a chance on a new kind of love. Kendra covets the perfect face and body—no matter what surgeries and drugs she needs to get there. To score his perfect home run—on the field and off—Sean will sacrifice more than he can ever win back. And Andre realizes that to follow his heart and achieve his perfect performance, he'll be living a life his ancestors would never have understood.

Everyone wants to be perfect, but when perfection loses its meaning, how far will you go? What would you give up to be perfect?"- summary from S&S website

I'm just gonna go ahead and say it- this book is perfect. It's a bad pun but it's true. Every single time I open up a Hopkins book, I am simply astounded at the variety of voices and situations that she puts into each book. I really enjoyed this companion to Impulse and I feel like you can read them separately easily. While some of the characters in Perfect are in some way involved with Connor from Impulse, there isn't a whole lot of overlap and the big event at the end is the same in both books, so it doesn't matter which you read first.

It was interesting to read from these perspectives (Andre excluded, though I'll come back to him) because, in Impulse, we just see Connor's side of the story, but now we see his sister's side (Cara), his former girlfriend's side (Kendra), and an acquaintance's side (Sean). Attempted suicide (and completed suicide) affects so many people and Hopkins did a good job of giving us these perspectives and getting into their minds. Andre is out of this Connor loop so it was a nice break to hear from him and his relationship with Kendra's sister Jenna.

Overall, this is just a fantastic book and I'm so excited that Hopkins has another book out next month so that I don't have to wait long before going back to her beautiful verse.

FTC: Received ARC at BEA (signed!). Link above is an Amazon Associate link; any profit goes toward funding contests.