Author: Miranda Kenneally242 Pages--Teens
Published by: Sourcebooks Fire on October 1, 2012
Summary (from goodreads.com):
Red-hot author Miranda Kenneally hits one out of the park in this return to Catching Jordan's Hundred Oaks High.
Parker Shelton pretty much has the perfect life. She’s on her way to becoming valedictorian at Hundred Oaks High, she’s made the all-star softball team, and she has plenty of friends. Then her mother’s scandal rocks their small town and suddenly no one will talk to her.
Now Parker wants a new life.
So she quits softball. Drops twenty pounds. And she figures why kiss one guy when she can kiss three? Or four. Why limit herself to high school boys when the majorly cute new baseball coach seems especially flirty?
But how far is too far before she loses herself completely?
Pre-Thoughts:
During the end of March this year, I've gotten into one of my romance reading binges. It started with How to Break a Heart and ended with Amelia O'Donohue Is So Not a Virgin (which isn't really a romance, but when I first picked up the book I thought it was a romance). Throughout this binge I got hardly any sleep. My schedule was pretty much go to work during the day and then read all night (well most of the night, I would go to bed around 3 or 4). Not the healthiest lifestyle. My reading schedule for the last days of March is below.
March 24
How to Break a Heart
March 25
March 26
March 27
(For March 28-29 I took a small break from romance and read Death on the Nile which actually is centered on romance, but is still, at it's core, a mystery)
March 30
Amelia O'Donohue Is So Not a Virgin
What was really surprising about this binge was not only that I read quite a few books in the span of a few days, but also that I was able to collect and write my thoughts for all of them right after I read them. Romance novels are always the hardest for me to write reviews on because I am so particular about the way I want my romances to read (even though I didn't post them until now). There is almost always something that I would want to change/complain about. Because of that, I apologize in advance because my thoughts are generally going to be more negative than positive even though I may have thought the book okay (it's hard to find a romance I love).
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The author, Miranda Kenneally[/caption]Anyway, in regards to the book Stealing Parker I picked it up because How to Break a Heart and My Life with the Walter Boys had made me crave another romance book so I decided to pick a relatively well known young adult romance novel author, Miranda Kenneally. She had quite a few books to her name already so I figured if I fell in love with Stealing Parker than the rest of her books would just be waiting for me to read!
Post-Thoughts:
Stealing Parker wasn’t a bad book for me. Honestly, I wanted more of a romance and less of a fight to get to said romance. I was rooting for Corndog (Will) since the beginning, but I did not get the amount of sweet moments between him and Parker that I wanted. When reading the cover I was sort of interested to see how the student-teacher relationship was going to work out, since I’ve never read about those (except on the news and by then we already know what happens) I was interested how the author was going to handle it. However, once Brian was introduced I immediately lost interest. I don’t know exactly what it was about him, but I just didn’t like him; probably because I know that he and Parker wouldn’t end up together and that their relationship was going to become too superficial. The age difference and the fact that he was a teacher didn’t bother me (well not more than anyone else at least), what bothered me was his personality and the way he treated Parker.
I didn’t like Parker’s father at all either. I never really understood what the reasons were for the way he was acting and it was never explained. I know that when Parker’s mother left the family it was hard on Parker’s dad, but I just couldn’t understand why he was so passive. Ryan (Parker’s brother) needed serious help. Even after Ryan OD’s, his father does nothing. Not only that, but Parker's father constantly listens to what the other people at his church say about him and his family, even though they are pretty nasty things. He even broke up with his (sort of) girlfriend because people were telling him it was inappropriate.
Corndog’s relationship with Parker was the very cute, but I felt like I wanted more. In the end when they get together it was as I hoped, but I still wasn’t satisfied with it. I wanted more relationship building between them, more cute moments that made me smile, and a more satisfying ending.
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Other books by Miranda Kenneally[/caption]In the end, I think the biggest reason that I didn’t appreciate this book as much some other people is because the book is definitely mature. I know it’s somewhat strange (especially for someone my age), but I like super fluffy and happy romances with lots of drama of course. This book portrays people and their emotions in a somewhat realistic way, although some of it was a bit dramatized to keep the story interesting. I know that normally that should be a positive thing, but for me, who just wanted a light fluffy romance, it was too much effort to keep up with.
To say I disliked this book would be true (unfortunately), but to say that it was a bad YA romance book would be false. Young adult romance novels just don’t interest me the way they did when I was a teenager, and I more like the fluffy middle school romances that don’t feature physical intimacy (besides kissing). Which reminds me, I should warn you that this book has a decent amount of physical intimacy in it (which I wasn’t expecting but I really should have been), and so for readers who don’t like that be warned! It’s highly doubtful that I will ever pick up this book again, but for people who love the YA romance with lots of mature, realistic people and scenes this book is definitely for you.
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