Cracked Up To Be by Courtney Summers

Summary:

Perfect Parker Fadley isn’t so perfect anymore. She’s quit the cheerleading squad, she’s dumped her perfect boyfriend, and she’s failing school. Her parents are on a constant suicide watch and her counselors think she’s playing games…but what they don’t know, the real reason for this whole mess, isn’t something she can say out loud. It isn’t even something she can say to herself. A horrible thing has happened and it just might be her fault. If she can just remove herself from everybody--be totally alone--then everything will be okay...The problem is, nobody will let her.

Review:

To say Cracked Up To Be was an awesome book would be a huge understatement. It was one of the best books I've read this year. Possibly, one of the best books I've ever read!

It was raw and honest in the way that it showed all of Parker's emotions without any limits and how it presented the situations that teenagers face everyday without holding back. Courtney did a great job in developing each character especially with Parker's snarky one. She seriously made them jump off the page and come to life starting in the very first chapter.

Also, Courtney's writing was excellent because of several reasons. For one, she wrote like a true teenager in the way the characters interacted with one another to the way they dealt with things. Second, she slowly left out the secrets of what happened that one night which lead me to keep guessing about what had occurred. Lastly, when the big secret did come out I was very surprised because it turned out to be none of my theories, instead it was something completely different.

I could really relate to Parker in the way she was always trying to be perfect: grades, boyfriend, friends. Though, as the book went on and I began to see Parker's downfall from the her perfect world because of things she could not control. I realized that maybe being perfect and popular isn't all it's cracked up to be which in my opion is a great message.

The only problem I had with this book was how Parker acted when people were trying to help her. She just pushed them away and told them everything was fine even though it wasn't which made me want to hit over the head several times.

Overall, Courtney has written an excellent debut novel. I can't wait to see what she has in store next because I have a feeling it will be even better than Cracked Up To Be.

Grade: A+ as go to Barnes and Noble now and spend your money on this!