It's fair to note that I'm an adult, and therefore NOT the target audience for this book, but I whole-heartedly believe that Cracked Up to Be is the book I needed as a teen. Also noting that this is a re-release of a novel first published in 2008, I found it incredible in the sense that it's thematic issues transferred over to the present time flawlessly, although this partially could be due to some updates in the content to bring the story into the current decade's level of technology. All that to say, I'm not a young adult anymore, but as a mother of two young girls, YA contemporaries featuring the struggles my daughters might encounter one day interest me. My oldest will be a teenager in just 6 short years, and while that seems like an eternity on glance, I'm pretty other parents here will understand just how fleeting each precious second is with our children.

Parker Fadley is an intentionally unlikeable character. That's not a cheap shot at the story, as the author herself states this fact in the introduction to the book. Parker tries incredibly hard to distance herself from everyone she knows and cares for, due to a careless mistake she committed in her junior year of high school. Most of the story is told in the present, after the event, but the suspense builds throughout as we slowly get flashback glances into how the night in question unfolded. Part of what makes this book so powerful is not that the author pulls every outrageous twist in her arsenal, or makes every single teenage issue happen to Parker herself, but she does touch on a lot of the tough content inserted into teen fiction these days, such as rape, suicide, and a brief mention of abortions that are not part of the narrative.

Truly, this is a story about Perfect Parker and what happens to her when this facade is forcibly removed. While I do think that all the adults are portrayed as complete idiots in this book, I think it's fair to assume that the book is written in an accurate way due to the fact that the author was only 22 when the book was published. I appreciate that, while all adults are not completely tuned out to when a kid is in trouble, this story does a great job of showing what it might feel like through the eyes of a teenager in that moment, and also how, while we want to help every kid that we see struggling, we might have no idea as adults in the best way to reach them. Mental health is really the theme that this story circles around, and I truly appreciate how the book ends on a messy, but hopeful note. Nothing is tied up in a pretty little bow, and this felt so authentic and real that I wanted to give Parker a standing ovation. If you're looking for a lightning fast read where the suspense of "what happened" will keep you turning the pages, please give Cracked Up to Be a try.

*Many thanks to the publisher for providing my review copy.