Tricks begins with 5 different teens from all walks of life from all over the United States. Each of them lead nearly completely normal lives, until one day something happens. Eden is your typical 16 year old girl whose father is a Pentacostal preacher. She is brought up in a deeply religious home and ends up falling in love with boy who questions his belief in God. As her story unfolds, she ends up falling in love and having sex with Andrew. Her parents think that she is possessed and send her to a camp for troubled teens that will get the demon out of her. There she becomes the sexual object of one of the guards. In order to gain bits of freedom she performs several sexual favors and eventually gets away from the camp and her abuser. She makes her way to Las Vegas where she is in a shelter and will get help for what she has experienced. She gets in contact with Andrew who has been on a desperate hunt for her. Her story ends with a hope for the future with Andrew.
Seth is a young man from a rural area who has discovered he was gay. He was also dealing with the death of his mother from cancer. As a release and way of experimenting, he meets a guy from Louisville and they soon develop a secret relationship. When his boyfriend has to leave for school, Seth is heartbroken and then finds himself in the arms of an older man. When his father discovers that he is gay, he is forced to leave home and then lives with a much older man. He apparently takes up a "sugar daddy" who he trades living arrangements for housework and sexual favors. After his first sugar daddy becomes too controlling and eventually finds a way to get out by working for an escort service on the side. He then gets kicked out and finally lives with another man at the end. He re-connects with his first boyfriend through Facebook.
Whitney is a young girl from an average family. Yet, she finds herself completely ignored by everyone in her family and giving away her virginity to a boy who later rejects her. She meets an older guy by the name of Bryn. He sweeps her off her feet and eventually in the world of drug abuse. He prostitutes her out and in return she is given drugs. She eventually finds that she cannot function without the drugs and soon becomes a full blown drug addict. After an overdose and beating, she ends up in the hospital with her family by her side. She knows that she has a long road ahead of her and she still wonders if dying would be easier.
Ginger is a young woman who is practically in charge of her family of 5 younger siblings. Her mother is a prostitute who jumps from one guy to another. They are currently living with her grandmother who is doing their best to take care of them. But when Ginger realizes that her mother has been secretly selling her to men for money over the years and then when her younger brother gets seriously injured, Ginger decides to run away with her friend to Las Vegas where they strip for money. But soon, that is not enough and it requires them actually becoming prostitutes. In the end, they are caught by an undercover cop and Ginger is sent back home to her Grandmother who tells her that her mom has HIV.
Cody is a young man who seems to be able to stay out of trouble. He drinks, gambles and is promiscuous. When his step-father dies, he gambles greatly in an attempt to pay for the bills and eventually turns to prostitution as a way of making money. He soon begins to see himself as merely an object for anyone to use and is not sure about his sexual orientation. While out on a "job" he is beaten up pretty badly and his story ends with him barely hanging onto life and in a coma.
Overall, the book had a very depressing tone about it. It would seem as though no one really managed to get out of the hole that is prostitution. And even if they did, they still had to deal with the emotional scars that were left behind. While the verse format kept the book moving, the stories seemed to only get worse as they went on and then did not really have any solid conclusions at the end. Some of them were still struggling with prostitution or the effects that it had caused. While the characters were all different, from different backgrounds and they all managed to get to the same place. We are aware that in real life, happy ending are rare, there were absolutely none to be had in this book.
SIDE NOTE: My deepest apologies to Ellen Wittlinger. This was not her work and it was a mistake on my part. I simply got the name of the two authors confused. I am so sorry!
