Book Review: Cracked Up To Be by Courtney Summers

The book cover

Plot: Cracked Up To Be is a novel of one "Perfect" Parker Fadley who was known for being a straight A student, had the perfect boyfriend, perfect popularity for being cheerleading captain, future valedictorian, and favorite pet of the faculty. Everything about Parker was perfect and  everyone thought that nothing could go wrong. Until something happened and Parker began to go to school drunk, fall off her top spot in the honors, skipped classes, quit the cheerleading squad, and dumped her perfect basketball star boyfriend. All she wanted was that people would leave her alone. Everybody thinks her methods are all cries for attention, but for Parker, it's the total opposite. Whatever she wants, she can't have at all, not with her parents putting her on suicide watch and the school's teachers trying to squeeze her secrets out. Most importantly, she can't give in to the New Kid. Jake has been curious of Parker for so long. The more she tries to mean him off, the more he wants to get to know her more, and he's making her feel things that she shouldn't be feeling at all. Nobody has ever made a second guess that Perfect Parker could turn out like this. The thing is, she doesn't want people to know. Something horrible has happened, and it just might be her fault.

Cracked Up To Be is Courtney Summers' debut YA novel featuring an immense and dark and totally "real high school world" story. Summers' is a hot shot at boggling her readers to a what-the-hell's-wrong?! state of reading. The whole story is a mix-up of a difficult-to-deal-with present and confusing flashbacks in between that all lead to how, why and what made Perfect Parker go deep down in the dumps.

I had read the book just once and I'm now itching to read it all over again! What's so great about the story is how funny and serious the main character's state is. Parker is a desperate girl who just wants to escape everything she's always been famous for and nobody knows why. She's got attitude problems that she's not really conscious of even at home. She ditches people meanly just because she wants to which doesn't really help her because it makes them want to keep her in St. Peter's world for longer. Her witty attitude which consists of mainly all bad traits like her mockery, the way she cusses and her really frank honesty makes her the "Crazy but Popular" type. And she's got the greatest talent that no one else in her school has: Lying.

Parker is perfect at anything except escaping. She couldn't escape her ex-boyfriend, she couldn't escape Becky, the New Kid, the guidance counselor, the principal, well, she can escape her parents, she can't escape school and she most especially can't escape her past. Nobody gets her and her attitude doesn't help, but being a reader is what makes us get her.

Summers is a delicious author, she removes herself from the rules and laws of writing and just creates as if taken out of a 15-year old girl's diary. She makes her readers feel young and whole high school and she can maneuver their minds to a very interested state. She is new, she is fresh, she is great and she is a must-stalk type of author!

In an engrossing read like Cracked Up To Be, Summers captivates her readers into a world of reality high school where escape isn't always where the Exit Sign hangs. With a curious character and a great mix-up of everything "adolescent", Cracked Up To Be makes one heck of an unputdownable debut that will surely, as the word has said, leave you stuck reading 'til the end.

My rating:
    +  

4 g-tec pens. This was really nice, you should grab a copy. =)