Author: Simone Elkeles
Published: October 1st, 2013
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary
Format: E-Book
Pages: 288
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Summary:
After getting kicked out of boarding school, bad boy Derek Fitzpatrick has no choice but to live with his ditzy stepmother while his military dad is deployed. Things quickly go from bad to worse when he finds out she plans to move them back to her childhood home in Illinois. Derek's counting the days before he can be on his own, and the last thing he needs is to get involved with someone else's family drama.
Ashtyn Parker knows one thing for certain--people you care about leave without a backward glance. A football scholarship would finally give her the chance to leave. So she pours everything into winning a state championship, until her boyfriend and star quarterback betrays them all by joining their rival team. Ashtyn needs a new game plan, but it requires trusting Derek, someone she barely knows, someone born to break the rules. Is she willing to put her heart on the line to try and win it all?
Review:
Wild Cards was a book that I was really looking forward to reading. I've read one other book by Simone Elkeles, Perfect Chemistry, and I absolutely loved it. Unfortunately, this novel wasn't as good as I remember Perfect Chemistry being.
When I started this book, I was really excited. The first 30 pages or so were amazing. I thought that if the book was as good as those pages were, then this would easily be a 5 star read. It turned out, however, that the quality of the story decreased as the story progressed.
My first issue with the book arose when Derek and Ashtyn first met. While I thought it was a cute meeting, I was really disappointed when it was revealed who they were to each other. I had a hard time getting passed that, which impacted my enjoyment of the story.
Ashtyn was my favorite character. While I know there are others out there (Catching Jordan, being one of them), I hadn't yet read a book with a female football player as the lead, so it added an interesting dynamic to the novel. Derek left me a little confused, though. He was supposed to be a "bad boy", yet he didn't really do anything bad. His actions didn't reflect the reputation he held. I just wish his devious side had been explored more. The author's main focus was Ashtyn and Derek. Normally, that wouldn't be a problem. It is a romance novel after all. It starts to become an issue, though, when the other characters suffer. At times it felt like the author shouldn't have even bothered creating any other characters, they were so badly written. All of them felt like nothing more than props. I think Ashtyn's father was the worst. For a character with so much potential, very little attention was actually paid to him.
The number one problem I had was how Elkeles decided to end the book. I thought it was horrible. It was completely unrealistic. While this novel had some issues, for most of the story, the writing was not one of them. That changed with the ending. Part of me finds it hard to believe that the same author wrote both the ending and the rest of the book. It was that bad.
I know I've been very critical in this review, but the book was actually pretty good. On the surface, this was an enjoyable story written by an author who has serious talent when it comes to writing romance. It wasn't until I dug deeper that I started discovering some problems. If you're looking for a quick, romance novel that doesn't have a lot of depth, then this is the book for you. As long as you don't go into it expecting it to be the next great work of literature, then I think there is a good chance that you will enjoy this story.
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