Book Review: Wild Cards (Wild Cards #1) by Simone Elkeles

Title: Wild Cards (Wild Cards #1)
Author: Simone Elkeles
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Publishing Date: October 1st 2013
Length: 342 pages
Keywords: YA, fiction, contemporary, romance, football, patchwork family
Source: Netgalley

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?

Summary by Goodreads

Derek and Ashtyn are yet another of Simone Elkeles' impulsive pairings who have to go a long way to finally disclose their feelings for each other. They are both quite hot tempered and very stubborn in their own ways. As always it was a pleasure to witness one of Simone Elkeles' turbulent romances evolve.

Derek might be introduced as the bad boy who breaks every girl's heart, but his true side is much more vulnerable and relaxed than anyone outside of his family would ever see. He and Ashtyn both have moving pasts that are constantly coming back to them and majorly affect their present and future together.  

Their living situation, Ashtyn and Derek in the same house, leads to a delicious attraction and constant electricity between the two of them. Them getting together would be so much more complicated for the whole family. There's also a thrilling and sneaky side to it that makes it so much more of a fun game both of them can't resist to play.

You'll also love the scenes circling around their patchwork family life. There's always something going on at their house that should keep you entertained in between very fulfilling make-out sessions and the rivalry with another football team.

Football's a huge part of Ashytn's life as it's her only hope to finally get away from her hometown and her dad. It's her great passion and Derek isn't a stranger to the sport either. I grew to like the sport very much in Miranda Keneally's CATCHING JORDAN and was happy to see football and especially the reality of female players with serious talent getting some more attention in Simone Elkeles newest YA book, too. 

WILD CARDS had very much the same feel to it like Simone's previous three Fuentes books, without the Spanish cultural background, yet not missing the hot tempered relationships. 

Simone Elkeles supplies us with a male and female perspective on the story. It's one of Simone's best writing traits, considering the need of so many readers to be in both of her characters' heads. And I definitely needed to be in Derek's head at some points during the story or I might not have cared about him as much as I did in the end (very much!).

4,5/5 ****/* WILD CARDS – An absorbing and energizing new YA game.

I expected no less than a very unpredictable love story, a couple with fiery tempers. A road trip, an unforgettable first meeting and an alluring story line should be argument enough to convince not only the football fans to pick up WILD CARDS. Very pleased to see there's already a second book in this series in work.

""You want to join me, Sugar Pie?"

I look down at my football jersey. "I'm not dressed for a party, and you didn't answer my question."

"I answered it. You comin' or not?"

He walks out of the room when I don't join him, leaving me alone with his grandmother. "Well, that was...entertaining, to say the least," she says" ― p. 270

WILD CARDS you might also enjoy CATCHING JORDAN by Miranda Kenneally and SHUT OUT by Kody Keplinger with two strong heroines who are caught in different kinds of football rivalries. Or maybe you like HOOKED by Liz Fichera about a girl on the school's golf team being not very welcome. 

  

* Haven't you read Simone's PERFECT CHEMISTRY series, yet? Get started now!

* Click here for an excerpt of WILD CARDS.

* Watch the first episode of WILD CARDS on Youtube.

* For more information about Simone and her books visit www.simoneelkeles.com.


 

Mini Reviews # 2

Here's part two of my mini review series featuring  titles I didn't get to review for a long time. Todays's post is dedicated to contemporary titles that deal with personal and familiar conflicts that affect our protagonists in IF I STAY, RETURN TO PARADISE and RICH AND MAD.

If I Stay by Gayle Forman

In IF I STAY Gayle Forman confronts us with a precarious and more than difficult decision that has to be made. Leave this world forever or stay and try to rebuild the ruins of your life?

After the horrible car accident that led to the death of her family, Mia is in a coma. She is the girl in between. Told from her perspective, Mia’s constantly reflecting on the sequences that have defined her life so far and compares them to her current situation. There are moments with her family, simply eating breakfast, or her falling in love with her boyfriend Adam.

I had high hopes in the relationship between Mia and Adam. I imagined it to be romantic and epic, but I felt just slightly entertained by Mia’s retelling of some of their relationship highlights. Tough Adam was the person I liked most in IF I STAY. He is sweet, has inner strength and is willing to fight for Mia no matter what.

But unfortunately I just didn’t click with the other characters. Mia’s parents felt too alternative for my taste. Nonetheless I find it helpful and necessary that Gayle Forman includes moments of their lives and retells the most important stations to offer the reader a glimpse of what could be forever lost to our torn protagonist Mia.

And torn is exactly how I felt about Mia, too. On the one hand I totally got how she felt about this whole messed up situation. On the other hand I couldn’t really identify with her character. Her life- as her parents’ lives- is highly dominated by music. She’s so passionate about her violin and I admire her for that. People who are interested in music the same way Mia is should like this read a lot.

I might not have cared about the characters as much as I’d wanted to, but the overall discourse definitely affected me and made me think a lot about what I would have done if I had been in Mia's situation.

3,5/5 ***/* IF I STAY- A philosophical discourse about the safety of life and the security a family offers. Gayle Forman tells the story of Mia with the right amount of sensibility and beautiful piano notes contributing a soundtrack to the sad story.

Publisher: Random House UK

Publishing Date: May 13^th 2010

Length: 232 pages

Keywords: YA, contemporary romance, car accident, coma, loss, music, love, friendship

Source: Bought 

Goodreads Summary

If I Stay Excerpt

Author's Homepage

Return To Paradise by Simone Elkeles

The sequel to LEAVING PARADISE circles around Maggie, Caleb and the accident…again. There might still be the need to talk about Maggie and Caleb’s feelings and the events of the past, but sometimes their conversations just felt like a revision of the LEAVING PARADISE talk.

Now Maggie and Caleb are forced to spend a four week trip together to talk about their experiences with drunk driving. Time to sort out their differences one could think, but to me it felt like Maggie and Caleb seem to be stuck in their old dialogues and actions. It’s not like in LEAVING PARADISE where they made progress by approaching the other. In RETURN TO PARADISE they are caught in a silly loop and unnecessary frictions, pushing the other away and letting him get close again.

New about this part of their story is that they join four other teens on their trip. They are Matt, Erin, Trish and Lenny. These teens have stories of their own, that are definitely worth hearing. Thanks to them and their refreshing personalities RETURN TO PARADISE doesn’t feel like a total dragging read. My favourite character in this novel might be Lenny with his ridiculously funny actions and jokes.

I didn’t really need a sequel after LEAVING PARADISE, but I’d already got it and so I made myself read it. There are some things that could have been solved faster. In the end I was content that the story came to a decent end.

3/5 *** RETURN TO PARADISE - A decent but unnecessary sequel. RETURN TO PARADISE promises more talk about the accident and its consequences, luckily with a few funny and fresh character cast additions.

Publisher: Flux

Publishing Date: September 1st 2010

Length: 312 pages

Keywords: YA, contemporary romance, love, drunk driving, friendship

Source: Bought

Goodreads Summary

Return To Paradise Excerpt

Author's Homepage

Rich and Mad by William Nicholson

Two teenagers falling in love for the very first time. Doesn’t that sound like a romantic and potentially overwhelming story? I imagined Mad- Maddy- to be independent and strong and Rich-Richard- to be that reckless and sexy young man. They both were nothing like that though. Maddy is so gullible and somehow doesn’t get what’s really happening around her. And then Richard is compulsively insecure and clumsy with all things concerning girls.

Rich and Mad’s families as their friends and crushes play a big role in the story aswell. How many illusional feelings and miserable thoughts can a young person bear and what does it take to take them away and replace them with self-confidence and happiness? That’s what RICH AND MAD is all about. I also liked that he involved the topic of sex and that he made clear that it can be a very dominant part of a teenager’s life.

But their love story simply wasn’t what I'd expected. I had been really looking forward to read RICH AND MAD, in the end it just wasn’t for me. There were too many issues and no clear line to follow. And I cannot believe the low self-esteem many characters showed so my connection to the characters was rather distant.  Rich and Mad's romance didn’t convince me either since it felt forced and meagre most of the time.

Note that RICH AND MAD contains explicit content such as physical and psychical violence and sexual interactions. William Nichols provides the reader with vivid details. Those scenes would have felt a lot more meaningful though if the romance between them had been a part of the story from the beginning on and not just some kind of rational decision. 

2/5 ** RICH AND MAD- Hormonal teenagers and a ton of personal, familial and social issues. That’s what William Nicholson’s RICH AND MAD has to offer. Unfortunately the story lacks the emotional depth I had wished for.

Publisher: Egmont UK Limited

Publishing Date: April 5^th 2009

Length: 314 pages

Keywords: YA, contemporary romance, love, sex, family

Source: Book Fair 

Goodreads Summary

Rich and Mad Excerpt 

Author's Homepage