Perfect By Ellen Hopkins Essay

Perfect By Ellen Hopkins

The book Perfect is an extremely accurate and realistic interpretation of the struggles many young people face during their unpleasant years as teenagers. Centered around the lives of four very different high school seniors; they all have one thing in common: hardships. Some more severe than others, but all in all, they are hardships.
Cara Sykes is dealing with not only her parents awful idea of what is right and what is wrong, but also the fact that her brother Conner attempted suicide. She finds her true self in a new, different, and exhilarating love. She doesn’t find herself attracted to her boyfriend Sean, but rather a girl she met snowboarding, Danielle. She is destined for Stanford and is trying to live up to
He takes extreme measures, steroids and pumping iron, to make sure he is number one on the field to keep from losing Cara, but nothing is ever that simple.
Kendra Matheison, Conner Sykes ex girlfriend, has the face and body of a supermodel; but she lacks the self-confidence to go with it. She uses plastic surgery and drugs to mask her inner hatred for herself and develops an eating disorder in the process. Jenna Matheison, Kendra’s younger sister, is constantly living in Kendra’s shadow. She doesn’t know how to retaliate against her idealistic family, so she turns to promiscuity and drugs.
Andre Kane is a wealthy young African American born into a family of PhD’s and Harvard graduates. His mom is the plastic surgeon who is doing Kendra’s rhinoplasty and breast augmentation, which is ironically how he meets Jenna, who becomes his girlfriend. He wants to make his dream of being a dancer become a reality. His parents don’t understand why he wouldn’t want to become a doctor like them. He feels obligated to do something with his life that he won’t