Rowena’s review of Wild Cards by Simone Elkeles.
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?
It’s been a while since I’ve read anything by Simone Elkeles but I’m knee deep in a re-watch of the entire series of Friday Night Lights and I was in the mood for some high school football action so I picked this one up.
Derek Fitzpatrick just got kicked out of his fancy private school for a prank that he took the fall for. His father is somewhere in the middle of the ocean, doing big Navy things and Derek is sent to live with his step-mother who is moving out of their Southern California home to her hometown of Chicago. He’s almost a senior and he’s just trying to get through, one day at a time.
When he meets Ashtyn Parker, things get really interesting. First off, she thinks that he’s a thug who has come to rob her family and she stabs him. And then she locks him in the shed. When she finds out that he’s actually her sister’s step-son, she’s embarrassed. From then on, Derek and Ashtyn fall into a bickering relationship. There’s a whole lot of chemistry between the two of them but Ashtyn has a boyfriend and Derek isn’t there to meet girls.
But things happen and really, you can’t help who you fall in love with.
Derek and Ashtyn take a road trip to Texas where Ashtyn is enrolled in a football camp (she’s the captain of her football team) and Derek is set to meet his grandmother. Derek’s grandmother has never been in Derek’s life. She ditched his Mom when his Mom married his Dad and Derek is not happy about this little reunion. It is while on this road trip that you see Derek and Ashtyn’s relationship really take off.
Ashtyn has broken up with her loser boyfriend, Landon McKnight and she’s starting to be honest about how she really feels about Derek but he’s not the guy for her. At least in his head he isn’t. But really, Derek…you can’t run from who you’re meant to be with. Everyone knows that.
What I liked about this book is that Ashtyn was honest with her feelings for Derek almost from the moment she realizes she has feelings. She knows what she wants and she goes for it. She had that I’m woman, hear me roar mentality and at times, it got on my nerves. Her, I don’t need any help from anyone (even though the circumstances called for a little help) made me want to smack some sense into her but I had to keep reminding myself that she was a teenager and sometimes teenagers act ways that nobody understands.
Derek was one of the good guys. He came off as selfish and rowdy but at his core, he was a genuinely good guy. He cared deeply for the people close to him and he was a good step-brother to Julian. I really liked the growth we see in his character and that grand gesture at the end was the business.
This was an enjoyable read but it wasn’t without things that got on my nerves (mostly the way Ashtyn behaved toward Derek) but overall, I enjoyed this book and think that fans of contemporary YA will enjoy this one. I wish we could have seen some kind of interaction between Derek and his father but even still, this was a good one.
Grade: 3 out of 5
This book is available from Walker Books for Young Readers. You can purchase it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
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