A review by victoria_tsonos
Collateral by Ellen Hopkins

4.0

This book surprised me, as it wasn't what I thought it was going to be. First of all, like all of Ellen Hopkins writing, it was perfection. Her poetry is absolutely stunning, and she has the most beautiful prose I have ever read. I loved that there were little inserts of poetry written by Cole and Ashley; it made them seem more real to me. However, I was slightly disappointing by the plot. there were too many flashbacks that caused the actual present story to move along at an incredibly slow pace, and the climax that I was waiting for didn't happen until the very end, and I mean the last 10 pages, and when it did happen it was done and over in 3 pages. After that, the story just ended, which made it incredibly rushed, and I had to double check to make sure that my copy wasn't missing any pages. The ending was just so extremely unsatisfying, it made me really sad. I did not like Cole's character at all, he made my skin crawl and the things he said just made me so mad, and Ashley's reactions just made me want to shake her. I did like Ashley's transformation and growth throughout the book, and ultimately she made the right choices and redeemed herself at the end. I kind of wish that there was a sequel for this so that I could get more and not be stuck with the ending of this one. I feel like this was a very unique story of real life situations that happen all the time, and I have never been around situations like these, which made it all very unique and interesting to read about. Overall, I enjoyed it, I just can't get over that ending though!