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Raised in a religious -- yet abusive -- family, Pattyn Von Stratten starts asking questions -- about God, a woman's role, sex, love. She experiences the first stirrings of passion, but when her father catches her in a compromising position, events spiral out of control. Pattyn is sent to live with an aunt in the wilds of Nevada to find salvation and redemption. What she finds instead is love and acceptance -- until she realizes that her old demons will not let her go. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Audible Audio Edition
Listening Length: 5 hours and 24 minutes
Program Type: Audiobook
Version: Unabridged
Publisher: HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Audible.com Release Date: September 29, 2008
Language: English
ASIN: B001H071I6
Best Sellers Rank: #140 in Books > Teens > Literature & Fiction > Social & Family Issues > Physical & Emotional Abuse #170 in Books > Teens > Literature & Fiction > Social & Family Issues > Values & Virtues #257 in Books > Teens > Literature & Fiction > Social & Family Issues > Family > Parents
I received a copy of BURNED in the mail from my cousin yesterday & couldn't put it down. I finished it all last night & was completely smitten! My cousin & I were both reared Mormon, & thus identified intensely with the story. We both come from dysfunctional families, which often made me feel like Hopkins had been peeking through my curtains to obtain her material for BURNED. I am now almost 30 & think this book is long overdue. Hopkins portrayal of a battered young girl in a devoutly religious (& more specifically, Mormon) family is dead on the mark. If only I had the clarity of Pattyn when I was a teen. (As conflicted & confused as Pattyn often is, she is wise beyond her years. My adolescence was marked with a blur of foggy madness...a fury of anger, loneliness, & confusion.) I have since made peace with my past & have left the Mormon church. Yet all the years and miles later, reading BURNED was like going home.
After reading the Crank trilogy, I couldn't wait to read more of Hopkins' books. So I read Burned. It was a great story but in the end everything crashed and burned, literally. SPOILER ALERT: The book started out okay, this high school teen is in a Mormon family with 7 sisters and an alcoholic, abusive dad. Pattyn, the girl, rebels a bit, then gets shipped off to her Aunt's house. She finds love there and that is the best part of the whole book, her summer at the Aunts house. She finds out she's pregnant when she gets back home & attempts to run away because her father will most likely kill her, as seeing how far the abuse went in portions of the book before, over very minor things. Her and her love get into an accident trying to run from cops. He dies and her unborn baby dies as well. All of this literally happened in about 10 pages. It just sucked! Horrible way to end the book. Then she gets home from her hospital stay and her father has disowned her and told her she needs to leave. She then decides she'll go on a killing rampage or kill herself. We don't know which she does because the book ends leaving the reader to decide her fate. I did just read on Ellen Hopkins website that her ending would be, Pattyn goes on the killing spree. Which I'm guessing ultimately leads her to prison. There are also rumors of a sequel book called Smoke, so I guess we'll see. I just hated the ending because it all happened so quick and it was so sad because she was in love with this guy and excited to have a baby and then it's just gone in seconds. Terrible ending. I really wouldn't recommend it, honestly. It wasn't worth reading the whole thing to have it end that way.
Most of the credit for two stars goes to the author's writing style, not the actual story itself because, for the most part, I hated this book. But Hopkins is a great writer, so she gets credit for it.I'll begin by stating that I am not Mormon. I grew up in Utah, but have never been Mormon. I will admit that I have a lot of issues with the religion and with some of the people who practice it (I do love my Mormon friends who I believe are wonderful people, so that is why I stated "some of the people"). However, the author's portrayal of Mormonism is way off in many places and this bothered me more than I thought it would. Sure, it is a patriarchical religion, but the Mormons I grew up with would never sanction abuse of their families. Not to say that there aren't Mormons who are abused (because to deny it would be naive), but that abuse is not sanctioned by the religion (at least my perception of it) as the author seemed to say it was.I was willing to overlook the problems with the portrayal of Mormons for a good story, but that was missing as well. There was so much that could be done with an abuse story that seemed to be lacking from this book. It felt like the abuse was glossed over, more of an excuse to send Pattyn off to the middle of Nevada than to tell what it's like to live in a household with an abusive and alcoholic father. I liked it a bit after Pattyn moved to her aunt's home, but it still seemed a little Lifetime Original Channel to me. The aunt's personal story is a little ridiculous and then the author decided to add in radiation poisoning to the story and that felt incredibly out of place. And her aunt was a little too perfect, but I still rather liked it.The only part that I mostly enjoyed about the book was the love story. It was sweet and normal though I disliked the outcome.The end of the book was ridiculous and annoying. It makes me sad that it ended the way it did because I found it neither redeeming nor realistic. This is my first Ellen Hopkins book and I will definitely try others because I liked the way she writes and because I know she is wildly popular with teenage girls, but this book is such a disappointment that I really cannot recommend it to anyone.
Ellen Hopkins is a really special writer. It's all in poet form and short phrases but a story is told nonetheless. This one next to "Crank" are my favorites of Ellen Hopkins. Once you start reading, you won't be able to stop
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