Cracked Up to Be by Courtney Summers

Title: Cracked Up to Be
Author: Courtney Summers
Published: December 23, 2008 
Pages: 214/Paperback 
Source: My personal library


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: I've absolutely adored all of Courtney's books, but this one just didn't sit with me the way her others did. Usually I like the fact that there's uncertainty in her writing, but in Cracked Up to Be it felt more like the story wasn't finished.However, this was still a great book.


Like all of her previous characters, Summers has created a wonderful cast to deliver a very emotionally intense novel. Each of the characters were interesting and helped propel the story along. 


I liked that there were flashbacks to the night of when everything happened. It provided a bit of mystery about what happened. 


The only thing I didn't like was the flow of the story. It seemed choppy and irregular. But besides that this is yet another wonderful novel written by a very talented author who I sincerely hope will be writing more in the future.