Burned

I am aware that following my first sex fantasy, things really started to spiral out of hand.

Everything began with a dream. Nothing special, simply a normal male fantasy, the type of dream that most teenage girls have. However, Pattyn Von Stratten is not your typical teenage girl. A straightforward dream may not be specifically wrong for someone raised in an abusive, but religious home, but it could be the first step toward hell and everlasting damnation.

For Pattyn, this dream is a first step. But is it going to a better life, or hell? When Pattyn begins asking questions for the first time. Seemingly unanswerable questions about God, women's roles, sex, and love, particularly love. What's that? It's where? Will she ever feel that? Does she deserve it?

Pattyn falls into serious difficulties with a genuine boy. Pattyn's father finds her in a compromising situation, and things go out of hand from there. She is forced to live with an aunt she doesn't know and is suspended from school.

When Pattyn is sent to the remote areas of rural Nevada, she is expected to find comfort and atonement. Instead, however, she discovers acceptance and affection. She feels worthy of both for the first time, but her old demons won't let her let go. Pattyn sets off on a course that would ultimately take her to hell; this hell may differ from the one she was taught about in sacrament meetings, but it is still hell.

Ellen Hopkins takes readers on an intense emotional journey in this captivating and brilliant poem-based book. Readers will be drawn in by Pattyn's narrative till the very end, from the highs of genuine love to the lows of abuse.