Wild Cards(Wild Cards,#1)

☆☆☆☆☆

Wild cards.

Wild Cards,#1

Simone Elkeles.

Publisher Walker Books

Publication Date: October1,2013

Genre: YA Contemporary Romance.

Format|Pages: Hardcover|342

Source: Goodreads|Library.

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? 

 
For a while now, I have been hearing good things about Simone Elkeles. Wild Cards was the first novel that I read by her and now I can see why so many people love her. Elkeles has a way with words, a way that pulls you into story and wants you to find out more. That’s how I felt from first to last page of Wild Cards. I needed to find out more about the characters, what was going happen with them, how it would end for them. I wasn’t disappointed. The story was breathtaking, heartbreaking. I couldn’t help but get sucked into Derek & Ashtyn’s story. I found myself unable to pull away from the story. It felt real to me. The characters, the story. It’s something that I could see happening in the real world. 


Derek & Ashtyn: Both of those characters were so different, and that’s why I was surprised about relationship between the two of them. Derek & Ashtyn falling in love with each other wasn’t what I saw coming, especially how the two of them treated one another at start. Though I could tell that Derek felt something from start when he saw her. I believe that was reason that he was always teasing her. Now Ashtyn, I think that she felt confused about her feelings for Derek, she liked him but she wasn’t sure how to act on them. I thought it was interesting that Ashtyn was a football player, and how hard she worked to fit in, especially when she went to the camp. I felt like relationship was more of hate and like relationship. One minute they getting along, another they are screaming at each other. I thought it was interesting that they were both football players too. I never thought that guy like Derek would fall in love. Meeting Ashtyn changed him. 


I love when book is written in two point of views, you get a feeling of both characters. I loved both Derek and Ashtyn, it was hard for me to decide who I liked more, both of them were unique in their own way. Both of them had a bit of difficult past and both of them tried to ignore it, pretend that it never happened, especially Derek. I was curious what he was hiding and when I found out he used play football, I wondered why he stopped. When I found about his mom, I felt bad for him. Once the two of them realized the feelings for one another, how they looked at each other, smiled at one another, got me to smile. I was happy to see a happy ending for both of them. I’m curious what story Elkeles will come up next in the series, whose story. If you are fan of Simone Elkeles, Wild Cards is worth checking out.