Hopkins, Ellen. Tilt. New York: Margaret K. McElderry, 2012.

           Three teenagers, three stories three lessons to be learned. McKayla, Shane, and Harley each have their own lives with their own struggles. Their stories start of separate, but all eventually become interconnected through their parent's family relationships. They try to cling onto the last shred of the world they've grown up in, but as they begin to notice the poor decisions their parents make and the lies that the adults are telling themselves, it becomes too overwhelming and the lives of all included begin to tilt. The clearview they once had has switched to confusion. The adults, as well as the teenagers, need to realize the fact that "once you tilt the truth becomes a lie".

           It is almost inevitable that Tilt, by Ellen Hopkins, will cause whomever is reading this novel to laugh, cry, and want to throw the book at the wall and scream in rage. But then run over and pick it back up again, because you want to know what happens next (completely guilty of this myself). Each of Hopkins books has touched me in a special way, but this one felt extra personal and all too real, because the struggles of the teens in this novel, I or anyone for that matter, could be dealing with too. Tilt makes the readers face the harsh realities of teen pregnancy, peer pressure, being and coming out as homosexual, knowing someone diagnosed with an std, depression, parents fighting, teen drinking, drug use, and even death. These may sound like intense topics, but I feel they are really important to read about, and the author crafted the lives of Mikayla, Shane, and Harley beautifully.

           Mikayla, almost eighteen, falls madly in love with Dylan, who loves her back. Dylan thinks he knows all of the tricks when it comes to sex. Mikayla loves him so much that she believes him when he says "I know what I'm doing. Promise. I won't get you pregnant". Now what happens to that love though when he ends up being wrong, and Mikayla ends up pregnant before the start of her senior year - and decides to have the baby?

           Shane, out as gay at sixteen and not getting any support from his father, lives a struggling life. His four year old sister Shelby is lucky to be alive considering she has Type 1 SMA (spinal muscular atrophy), and Shane has been living with her impending death since the day she was born. While Shane's mother spends all her time caring for Shelby, his dad becomes more and more distant from the family. Then the summer before his junior year, Shane falls in love with his first boyfriend, Alex, who turns out to be HIV positive. Will he be able to accept the love of Alex, someone who can actually bring light into his dark life, knowing that his life, like Shelby's, will also be shortened?

           Harley, a fourteen year old good girl, who just wants to be adored. She wants to be looked at, drooled over, and checked out the same way guys do to her best friend Bri. Self-conscious of her weight, she goes on a diet, loses all this weight, and suddenly gets what she wants: the attention of boys. Harley looks to experience new things in her life, especially the "love" of an older boy. Over the summer she tries to define who she is and who she wants to be, but she never expected to enter a world full of peer pressure and activities she should not be involved in at her age, and she turns to self-destructive extremes. She eventually realizes though that the attention she thought she wanted isn't so appealing after all.

           Love, in every form, has crucial consequences in this brilliant, heart-touching novel.