A review by annvalentine
Cracked Up to Be by Courtney Summers

5.0

Courtney Summers is one of those authors who can write dark, messy teenage characters and stories without seeming overdone or didactic, even in 2009. I don't typically enjoy YA focused around privileged, popular characters, but Parker's disdain and anxiety drove through the heart of this book, giving the fallen HBIC dimension so often missing from tropes ascribed to teen girls. Cracked Up to Be has joined for me the ranks of Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak in difficult but necessary young adult reads.