Wild Cards by Simone Elkeles : A Review!

Happy Friday,
it's the end of the week!

So today's post is a book review of....

Wild Cards 

by

Simone Elkeles

Tagline: N/A

I know what you are thinking. Boy that was fast. Honestly as soon as I finished writing Wednesday's post about the books I wanted to start reading I immediately started reading this book. Well, just a snippet of what's to come... 

This book was not what I expected it to be. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I guess you'll have to wait and see!

The Blurb:

"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?"

Do you all want to know something I hate? Extremely misleading blurbs. This has to be one of the worst I've seen for misleading the reader. So there's the answer to the question. This book was not what I expected it to be and that's a bad thing!

First things first. Derek Fitzpatrick is not a bad boy, he's so far from it it's not even funny! First of all he gets kicked out of boarding school. Sure you might think that makes him a bad boy, but he got kicked out because he took the fall for a prank a group of them committed. Not so bad if you ask me. Then there's the fact that he does yard work for Ashytn's family without even being asked and don't forget the fact that he spends a lot of time getting his step brother to like him. Yeah Derek Fitzpatrick is not a bad boy he maybe a little lost and confused but he's not bad. Alex from Perfect Chemistry was a bad boy, he was gang member, do you see the difference?

I wanted to love this book I really did. I just couldn't. 

It felt very rushed. The majority of the book is a slow burning romance between Ashtyn and Derek, that is so slow burning and the reader feels so little chemistry between the two (it's down to the characters to tell us there is chemistry rather than showing us there is chemistry) that when the declarations of love come it makes no sense. Ashtyn seems so broken over him that it just confused me because I didn't feel any chemistry from them at all. 

Also I felt the only characters story that came full circle was Derek's! He made up with his mothers side of the family he started playing football again, he's happy. Ashtyn felt so underdeveloped. We have this half story about how she's scared of feeling things for someone because they always leave like her mum did, her sister did, her dad doesn't care, she plays football to get his attention and it doesn't make a difference in fact instead of her dad being proud that his daughter is Varsity Football Captain he thinks she should give it up! She jumps from Landon to Derek so fast. Honestly the whole book was so rushed it could have done with being longer. 

The cover is also misleading. It talks about Ashtyn battling to reach state championships to win a football scholarship but there isn't one single football game in the whole damn book, there's a lot of training, there's football camp, team meetings etc but there is no football games there's no state championships pretty much the entire book takes place in the summer before their senior year. I was expecting this book to be told through the football season not just before it happened. 

I feel a little short changed. May be I'm being to harsh may be I need to read it again to get a better sense of the book, but on the first read it just didn't grip me. There were a funny moments, a few cute moments, but ultimately I just felt it was a whole load of unnecessary drama, and I just wish that it had been going on during the football season then at least something exciting would have been going on. 

I heard this book is part of series not sure if that's true, I hope it is and I hope if there is a book 2 it's a continuation of Derek and Ashtyn's story because I don't think that should be the end, I want to Ashtyn come full circle I want to see her win the state championship!

For this book I can't give it more than 3 stars, so it's sadly languishing between 2.5 and 3 stars. Being such a fan of Simone Elkeles' previous books I was left a little disappointed after finishing this. 

That's all for today I hope you enjoyed this post and I shall see you all on Monday!

Don't forget to comment below and tell me did you read this book? Did you love it or did you hate it? I would love to hear from you!

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