ARC Review: Wild Cards - Simone Elkeles

Title: Wild Cards
Author: Simone Elkeles
Pub Date: Oct 1st, 2013
Publisher: Walker Books
Page Count: 288

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

You haven't swooned until you've read Wild Cards. This beautiful story of two teens will bring a fangirl to scream. - Musings of a Blogder

I read this book on a very long car trip and I honestly loved it! It’s centered on football, a topic I’m really not familiar with. Before reading, I had thoughts that I wasn’t going to be able to understand or connect with the story. After reading, I can honestly tell you that it’s about football, but they never actually PLAY it. For me, it doesn’t matter because there wasn’t much reason to put a football game into this plot.

The main problem with this novel is how it’s telling rather than showing. Simone uses a LOT of telling to describe her characters and then their actions don’t necessarily match their description. We’re told that Derek is a bad boy, but really he doesn’t show it. Sure, he has an attitude, but that doesn’t make him a “bad boy”. And then we’re told Ashtyn is amazing at football, but there isn’t anything that really proves that statement.

What I did like was the chemistry. There was SO MUCH tension that I was yelling for them to finally admit their feelings. Maybe this isn’t good for some reviewers, but for me, it means that I felt something, even if it was annoyance. I had SO MANY feels from this book and that boosted to the rating. It was far from instalove and actually started more as lust. I’m just happy to see that there was more to the relationship than physical as time went on.

This story was really short because everything was dragged out. I actually like the way it was done. Most of the time it’s like “ugh, get on with it”, but it gave me time to connect with the characters and the plot. I loved how there was a lot of content within events. It was one of those fun reads with teenage humor but it wasn’t hard-hitting and impacting.

Only thing about the story was the intense awkwardness that came with it. Ashtyn is Derek’s step-aunt, technically. Can you imagine kissing your step-aunt of the same age? It’s awkward! That was a part of the story that didn’t need to happen and would’ve been better off edited out! If Ashtyn was Derek’s step-mom’s friend (as opposed to sister), we could’ve avoided the weirdness.

Male MC Derek is a guy who refuses to eat junk food, makes jokes and drives Ashlyn crazy. I felt an honest connection with Derek. Derek was such a nice character, even though he wasn’t a “bad boy”. He’s also totally SWOONWORTHY because he genuinely cares for Ashlyn, despite her being some crazy chick.

I don’t like Ashlyn. She acts like “I gotta suck it up and be strong” despite actually whining all the time. I hate she wouldn’t accept help from Derek because she branded him as “horrible. Their meeting starts with her thinking he’s in her yard to prank her and she stabs his foot. After that, SHE’s the one hating him and it didn’t make sense. She grew on me as a character afterwards but I’m still a little iffy about her.

Overall, I squealed hard reading this. It appeals to the “teenager” inside of me, but didn’t make the critical side of me happy. I can see why the overall YA audience would like this but I know for me, I’ll be awaiting book 2 of this epic series. It can only get better/worse from here, but I really hope that it gets better as the story goes along. And I also hope that there’ll be more development for ideas that weren’t touched on.

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Simone Elkeles is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of novels for teens. Simone’s books have won many awards including being YALSA Top Ten Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers, being named to the YALSA Popular Paperbacks and Teens Top Ten lists, and added to the Illinois “Read for a Lifetime” Reading List. Simone also won the coveted RITA award from the Romance Writers of America for her book Perfect Chemistry. Simone is especially proud of the fact that the Illinois Association of Teachers of English named her Author of the Year.

Simone was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago, where she still lives today. Simone went to the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and received her Bachelor’s of Science there in Psychology in 1992. She continued her education at Loyola University-Chicago where she received her Master’s of Science degree in Industrial Relations while working for a manufacturing company creating diversity programs for their employees.

She loves animals (she has two dogs – a labradoodle and a German Shepherd), kids (she also has two of those) and her family. In her spare time she’s the Hockey Mom for her kids hockey teams and is an active Girl Scout leader specially trained in outdoor education. She also spends time mentoring other teen and adult authors. (She also loves sushi, which you can probably tell by reading her books.) Simone writes about teens because she was a teen in the 80’s (when spiked hair and blue eye shadow were “rad”) and she loves writing about those exciting teen relationships and romances.