Tilt

July 30, 2012
In this companion to Hopkins’s adult book, Triangles (2011), the author offers a gripping novel-in-verse about teens whose lives shift dramatically because of sex. High school junior Mikayla is in love, but her relationship with her boyfriend is tested when she gets pregnant. Shane, 16, is dating a boy with HIV and coping with his four-year-old sister’s incurable illness. Harley, a freshman, starts experimenting with drinking and drugs, as an older boy pressures her to have sex. Readers unfamiliar with Triangles may have trouble tracking the characters’ interlinked relationships, but Hopkins’s many fans will find plenty of authenticity, especially in Harley’s story (“I’m Running/ With a fast crowd and I’m not/ sure how I got here... I never expected to go/ this far”), and appreciate the author’s clever touches (the closing words/lines of the three narrators’ sections lead into single-page poems from the POV of other key characters). While these stories are not quite as compelling as those in Hopkins’s previous books, readers will likely move through this installment just as quickly. Ages 14–up. Agent: Laura Rennert, Andrea Brown Literary Agency.