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A review by christajls
Cracked Up to Be by Khristine Hvam, Courtney Summers
4.0
This review originally posted at More Than Just Magic
Cracked Up to Be is outside my usual reading comfort zone. I don’t read a ton of contemporary and almost no books about teen “mean girls.” So I was a little nervous diving into it. I gave myself plenty of time to read it so that I would be able to finish it during the read-a-long. I did not expect that I would totally be sucked up in the story to the extent that I would start sneaking pages whenever I could – while cooking, in the morning when I was supposed to be getting ready for work, over my lunch break. I couldn’t get enough. This book is addictive – I couldn’t wait to find out what the big secret was that had caused Parker to change her life so dramatically.
One thing that really stood out for me, other than the mystery of it all, was that Parker wasn’t a particularly likeable character. In fact she could be down right horrible. But for me this was a nice change from the average YA female protagonist. People are complicated and they are layered and reading about characters who are perfect in every way gets boring. Reading about someone like Parker, with character flaws abound, is significantly more interesting.
Cracked Up to Be is outside my usual reading comfort zone. I don’t read a ton of contemporary and almost no books about teen “mean girls.” So I was a little nervous diving into it. I gave myself plenty of time to read it so that I would be able to finish it during the read-a-long. I did not expect that I would totally be sucked up in the story to the extent that I would start sneaking pages whenever I could – while cooking, in the morning when I was supposed to be getting ready for work, over my lunch break. I couldn’t get enough. This book is addictive – I couldn’t wait to find out what the big secret was that had caused Parker to change her life so dramatically.
One thing that really stood out for me, other than the mystery of it all, was that Parker wasn’t a particularly likeable character. In fact she could be down right horrible. But for me this was a nice change from the average YA female protagonist. People are complicated and they are layered and reading about characters who are perfect in every way gets boring. Reading about someone like Parker, with character flaws abound, is significantly more interesting.