Disappointed

Last night I finished reading Burned by Ellen Hopkins.  It was about a Mormon teenage girl named Pattyn living in Nevada with her abusive father and six sisters.  She is the oldest child and is depended upon by her mother to help with taking care of most of the chores and looking after her younger siblings.  She gets into trouble drinking and hanging out with a boy (a non-Mormon boy at that) and is spent to stay with her aunt in rural, northern Nevada for the summer.  Her aunt turns out to be far more understanding and supportive than her parents, and Pattyn spends some of the happiest days of her life at her aunt's ranch that summer.  Most importantly, she falls in love with a young man who lives just down the road.  Despite frequent foreshadowing that things are not going to turn out well for the young couple, I was really rooting for them.  The book has a very tragic ending, and I have to admit I almost threw it across the room when I finished it!  I wanted so badly for things to work out for them.  I know that happily ever after is not the most realistic ending to a story, especially to a teenage love story, but why does everything have to go so horribly wrong?  The book also made me angry with the government and the Mormon faith.  I'm not sure that the author intended to make the reader so ticked off at the world, but that was the result of reading that book for me anyway.  I am going to have to choose a more uplifting story to read next...