Cracked Up To Be by Courtney Summers

Pub Date: December 2008

Summary: What causes the perfect girl to make the perfect fall from grace?

Parker Fadley is known as the perfect girl at school.

Cheerleading captain. Girlfriend of the most popular guy. Future Valedictorian.

But she turns into someone completely different.

Someone no one could have ever imagined her as before.

Parker starts drinking at school and failing her classes.

The one thing Parker hates doing is talking about what made her this way.

She just wants everyone to leave her alone.

Parker wants to disappear, she wants everyone to just ignore her.

If she can act like it’s no big deal, then why can’t everyone else follow suit?

But, Parker’s parents put her on suicide watch.

And her counselors are demanding to know the truth.

When a nice guy starts falling for her, Parker doesn’t know how to handle the feelings.

He’s making her feel things that she hasn’t felt in so long.

Parker knows something bad has happened.

She knows it might be her fault.

Rating: 3.5/5 Stars

Review: Cracked Up To Be was a wonderful debut novel by Courtney Summers. It had a dark and haunting angle to it, but it still had a hint of love and romance. Parker was the perfect character. She was haunted by everything that happened to her, everything that she saw. She doesn’t know how to handle things. She feels as if she’s lost it all, so why not act like it? The nice guy (whose name will go unsaid) was pretty much the exact opposite of Parker in every way, but yet they were pretty much perfect for each other. I could picture many parts of this book in my mind, which is always a plus. Most of Cracked Up To Be could be someone’s real life high school experience and I don’t think everyone’s ever had a plot quite like this before. I’m really happy I had the chance to enjoy this book. I think a lot of other people need to read Cracked Up To Be, I’m almost certain they will like it!

-Lexi(: