Oct 4, 2013

Book Review: Wild Cards by Simone Elkeles

Title: Wild Cards
Series: Wild Cards, #1
Author: Simone Elkeles
Publication Date: October 01, 2013
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Add to: Goodreads / Amazon / Book Depository

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?

My Thoughts:

This reminded me of Perfect Chemistry (book 1), a bit. Not because it's by the same author, but because the two lead characters were kind of alike the ones in PC. Although I have to admit that I liked this one better because this one focused more on family and football, not heavy on drugs and gangs, which weren't really mentioned and not put on topic in the story. The only similarities I could point out was the part where girl has boyfriend, who is a jerk, then she starts to develop feelings for a guy she thought she wouldn't want to.

I don't have much say for the story because I like the plot. It's the characters that were kind of giving me a hard time reading. I love Derek and Ashtyn together but as individuals, Ashtyn makes me want to pull my hair out. I love how determined she is on something she's passionate about and she proves to the guys that she's not a weak girl but she's really blind when it comes to her boyfriend, Landon. And when there were times Derek wanted to help her, she just shut him down because she thinks that he's helping her because she's weak. Now, whenever that happens in the book, I really get angry because she's mistaking his kindness as something like an insult. The other characters, I wished there were more about them. Especially Ashtyn's teammates/friends because they seem to be nice and caring for her. But the romance between Derek and Ashtyn really won me over. They're cute together and the ending was so sweet!

I was looking forward to this book a lot. I liked the Perfect Chemistry books (but I'm kind of biased on the second one) and when I heard about this, I can't help not to squeal. The synopsis sounded good and this is the first contemporary book that had me intriguing because the female lead plays football. And to think that she's the only girl in their team. It's just sad that the story ends in just one book and I think another pair will star in the next book. I badly want more Derek and Ashtyn and I was hoping to see a game where they would kick Landon's ass :(

My Rating:

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