A Sin Such as This

Overview

Ellen Hopkins continues Tara Lattimore's story in this second installment, picking up after she has traded her single professional life in San Francisco for marriage to Dr. Cavin Lattimore and a new home at Lake Tahoe. The stability she hoped for proves thin almost immediately: Cavin's gambling turns out to be the least of it once Tara learns he has been secretly meeting Sophia, his former girlfriend, who also happens to circle in and out of his son Eli's life.

The household grows more tangled from there. Tara's niece Kayla moves into the picture and becomes entangled with Eli, forcing Tara into the role of reluctant referee even as she fends off Eli's own advances toward her. Meanwhile her sister Melody's crumbling marriage raises the uncomfortable possibility that old secrets — including a long-ago encounter between Tara and Melody's husband, Graham — may not stay buried.

Hopkins builds Tara's unease into something closer to dread, as figures from her past resurface and she senses she is being watched and tested. Having clawed her way out of a childhood marked by poverty and abuse, Tara has always relied on her own toughness, but the novel asks whether the compromises and wrongs of her earlier years can truly be outrun, or whether they are simply waiting for the right moment to resurface.

A Family Drama Built on Consequence

Where the first book in the series traced how Tara escaped a hard upbringing to build a new life, this installment is preoccupied with the cost of what came before and after — the compromises made along the way and the people affected by them. The narrative structure, weaving together a blended family's competing loyalties and resentments, keeps the story's tension domestic rather than external: the threats to Tara's security come from within her own household and social circle rather than from any outside force.

Hopkins, known for tackling difficult adolescent and adult experiences directly in verse and prose, uses the marriage thriller framework here to examine how trust erodes gradually, through small betrayals and long-kept secrets rather than a single dramatic rupture. The book sits within a broader body of work in which the author does not soften depictions of addiction, infidelity, and abuse, treating them as forces that shape character rather than as plot ornamentation.

Why A Sin Such as This Has Been Challenged

A recurring complaint raised in school board discussions is that the book's frank depictions of sexual relationships, including an inappropriate dynamic between a stepmother and stepson, make it unsuitable for shelving where younger students might access it without restriction. Reviewers submitting formal reconsideration requests have pointed to scenes of infidelity, seduction, and sexual tension as going beyond what they consider appropriate for a school library's general collection, arguing the content is better suited to an adult readership.

Other objections center on the novel's treatment of gambling, family betrayal, and the lingering effects of childhood abuse and neglect, with some challengers contending that the combination of explicit content and morally ambiguous characters offers little redeeming instructional value for students. The book has been the subject of challenge or removal efforts in 2 states and 4 districts tracked in this catalog, generally as part of broader pushes to restrict Ellen Hopkins's work in school libraries over its candid handling of sexuality and mature relationships.