Review: Wild Cards by Simone Elkeles

Review: Wildcards by Simone Elkeles
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Release date: October 1, 2013
Publisher: Walker Children's
Series: #1 in the Wild Cards series
Source: ARC from BEA
Rating: Go read Catching Jordan instead.



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?


Ugh. This book. It just doesn't work, though it gives a valiant effort. It has massive potential, but most it just kind of annoyed me. Wild Cards purports to be a romance novel about football, but there isn't even one football game in this book. Not one. See that football player on the cover. LIES. ALL DIRTY LIES.



Wild Cards is about Ashtyn Parker, whose name bugs the crap out of me. Look, strange spellings are fine in real life, and you can spell your name however you like. But for some reason, they bother me in fiction. She's a girl and she's captain of her high school varsity team, much to the chagrin of her father and her boyfriend, both of whom are sexist crapbuckets who deserve circumcision. Derek is the hot, troublesome bad boy (excpe that he's NOT, why does everybody keep SAYING THAT, he literally goes around charming little children and doing the yard-woek unasked, he's not bad at all you idiots).  Their  meet-cute goes disastrously, hilariously wrong, and I was like, yes! Come alive, you boring little book.

Nope.

Then, as Christina pointed out while she was reading this book, Derek informs the reader that there's electricity flowing between him and Ashtyn (page 27. 27). Which there is not. Show me the electricity. Don't just inform me of it and except that to be good enough. At least the characters gained a lot more personality by this point. Unfortunately, I hated their personalities, so that was nice.

"I'd bet my left nut that Chicago beaches are nothing like the beaches in Cali."



Ew, Derek, can we leave your nuts out of this? Also: you are correct. Except for the fact that those of us in California don't ever call it Cali. Also, bring on the cliche alerts: the girl who's just one of the guys and doesn't know about fashion. The best friend (Monika. Ugh, that spelling) who knows all about clothes and boys and makeup and is willing to help out the less-fashionable protag. Except who cares about Ashtyn's friends? The author certainly doesn't! They're basically just names on a page! As @ournoisyhearts pointed out, all Ashtyn's friends feel like furniture.

Also, Ashtyn, just because a guy knows how to make breakfast, doesn't mean he must have spent a lot of time with his mother. Guys are capable of scrambling eggs and do not actually requite women to show them how. They, like females, require sustenance for continuing to be alive. There was a lot of accidental misogyny, which is super annoying in a book that otherwise does a good job of dealign with people's everyday sexism, particularly in sports. Bonus points for diversity, though (casual mention of a football player's two dads).

The football plot I really could have liked. Ashtyn, team captain and the only girl on the team, has to deal with the sexism from her rival team and her jealous douchenozzle boyfriend and her gruff father, who completely sucks. She needs to subvert everyone's expectations, prove herself, etc. But Elkeles, to my everlasting despair, doesn't focus on this plot at all. Instead, she focuses on Derek and Ashtyn, who have as much chemistry as a pair of chairs.

CAN'T YOU FEEL THE TENSION?

Why? Because they move tooooo faaaaast. Like, there's insta-lust, which this sort of is, but... i just didn't believe it, you know? Ashtyn and Derek are all right characters with some funny moments, but their chemistry felt totally forced to me. If it had been left to develop naturally, I might have shipped it. But not when the author is just knocking the characters' heads together like they're her Barbies. Then stupid Derek and his and Landon's stupid alpha male nonsense. "Bleghhh, Ashtyn is a prize to be won, my balls are bigger than your balls, bleghhhh." I literally laughed out loud when Ashtyn was all, "I was in love with him. I had been all along, really." Really? Really?

I mean, there's cute bantering, and then there's just being mean. Ashtyn and Derek are mean to each other. I like them so much better as characters when they're apart. When Ashtyn's dealing with her father (TALK ABOUT UNDERDEVELOPED PLOT THREAD) or football, she's great. When Derek is thinking about his mom, he's tremendously likeable. Together? Ugh.

I love football and will always be willing to read books about football. The misleading cover and synopsis made me think the romance would be on the field or more directly football-related. I will admit the kissing scenes are pretty steamy. But ugh stupid too easy happily ever after ending and stupid non-footballness and stupid forced love and blehhhhhh. That ending? Give me a break. Super rushed and super cheesy. I rolled my eyes so hard I think I sprained them.

Seriously, go read Catching Jordan by Miranda Kenneally instead. Say hi to Sam Henry for me. With your lips.