Wild Cards by Simone Elkeles

Release Date: Out now!

Publisher: Walker Books

Pages: 288pgs

The Story

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?

The Review

A big thanks to the publisher on netGalley for providing me a review copy of this book!

I totally love Simone Elkeles as an author because she wrote Perfect Chemistry which is one of my favourite, favourite books coming from her. In saying that, like with any new book of hers that comes out onto the shelf, I had a lot of high hopes for her new book, WILD CARDS, because it sounded amazing and most reviews that I have read lately have praised this book up so much so of course I was really looking forward to reading this book because of such hype.

Unfortunately, as much as I hate to say it and admit to myself (and let me tell you I really hate myself right now), I didn't like this book. Like at all. I know it sounds horrible when I put it bluntly like that, but I truly did not like this book at all. At first, before even reading this book, the one thing it had going for it was that a girl was playing football and like any reader I thought it sounded amazing already. However, like with some books out there, I guess the execution of the book that sounded amazing at first just didn't play out that way for me and it's sad because this book had a lot of potential but in any case that's how it is.

Now the main reason why I didn't like this book was because of the characters. All of them, especially our main characters, had no likable quality about them whatsoever, even if you tired really, really hard enough to find a reason to like them. Just my god . . . the characters . . . what happened to you guys and yes I'm mostly talking to you main characters, Ashtyn and Derek. Those two were just so frustrating out of everyone else! I tell you, Ashtyn and Derek were so annoying with their up-and-down insta-love relationship and they did absolutely nothing to make me feel otherwise.

So initially, the book gave me this idea - this impression - that Ashtyn was supposed to be this superstar girl football player and yet she was nothing of the sort. Sure she practiced with 'the guys' now and then, but really all she did was whine and moan when the guys treated her like crap - especially her current jerk of a boyfriend - and for someone who is supposed to be 'tough' and all of that, she should have stepped up her game which she clearly didn't. So yay for non-existent girl power! Then there was Derek who was another prime example of least-interesting-male-character-ever. He was seriously messed up that one. I mean, this book should have been more about Ashtyn's triumph in football rather than Derek's me-me-me-all-about-me-I'm-seriously-too-cool-for-school type of book. Seriously, words can't describe how much I hated Derek. I seriously loathed him because he was labelled as a 'bad boy' but from what I've read he was anything but that . . . just someone who continues to annoy me like Ashtyn does with their romantic antics. Just argh. What happened to these guys? I wanted to love them so badly but . . . they do so much to my brain that made me rant like this. Ugh.

Overall, my review turned out to be more of a rant than a review, but for me WILD CARDS was not the book I thought it would be like and that's a major disappointment on my part.

The Rating

1/5 stars