Simone Elkeles

My intention when reading this book was not to compare it to Perfect Chemistry. I know it’s kinda-sorta a sequel, so making comparisons is somewhat justified, but I was really wanting to take the story about Carlos and Kiara as its own story. But I can’t. There were a lot of aspects that I really liked about Perfect Chemistry: exploring Alex’s gang connections, Brittany’s strained relationship with her parents, seeing Brittany outside her comfort zone and in Alex’s world. I show more wasn’t sure if a sequel could live up to the way I was instantly pulled into that story. When I found out it was about Carlos, I wasn’t sure what to expect because, honestly, I could hardly remember him from the first book. And then there’s a line on the cover that says, “If you loved Alex Fuentes, wait until you meet his brother Carlos…” and I instantly thought, “Yeah, right.” So yes, I was skeptical, to say the least, going into this book. But alas, I must confess this book proved me wrong, because I just might love Carlos more than Alex.
In the beginning of the story, Carlos was a little too much for me. He pushed buttons just for the sake of pushing buttons, and oh man, does that annoy me. And he didn’t do it to be funny, he did it to get under people’s skin. I was about ready to drop-kick the boy. Yet, there were blink-and-you’ll-miss-it flashes of the fact that he’s really a nice guy who’s afraid to let people know it – because if they know it, then he’s vulnerable. I also found that Kiara was more relatable for me than Brittany. She’s quiet, but not shy, so she’s not exactly a wilting wallflower who lets Carlos get away with the crap he tries to pull on her. The way Elkeles moves them from practical strangers to wanting something more feels very natural in the story. And the fact that Kiara’s parents actually played an important role in the book, especially her dad, made the relationship between the two of them even more believable.
As before, this book is written with both characters’ perspectives. Carlos’s voice is wonderfully done, because I was right there with him thinking that Brittany was annoying (which I didn’t when she was actually the main character), so his perspective is definitely captured. Kiara’s voice allows readers to see a deeper side of her, one that would be difficult to otherwise see because she speaks so little until she really knows a person.
I do want to give a word of warning to people who have read Perfect Chemistry and are hoping for the same thing: the romance is not quite the same, so if that’s what you’re looking for, know that it’s going to be different. Alex and Brittany’s attraction was, to put it mildly, a bit steamy. Carlos and Kiara’s is a bit more subdued than that. There are definitely moments of intensity and heat, but there was a different feel to it.
A big complaint a lot of readers of Perfect Chemistry was that the epilogue was too over the top and extremely saccharine. There is, in fact, an epilogue in this book, and some might find it unnecessary. Maybe it is, but I wasn’t bothered by it. While it’s not completely devoid of a certain amount of cheesiness, it’s much more realistic. There’s nothing as far-fetched as Alex and Brittany’s future promises, but the circumstances as they are presented might leave some readers thinking it was a little too similar to a story that’s already been told. show less

NOTE: I received the eARC via Netgalley, and honestly - I can't believe it! So a HUGE thank you is in order!

First off, I'd like to say that Simone Elkeles is among my favorite contemporary authors of all times. I loved what she did with the Fuentes brothers in the Perfect Chemistry series and there was no way I was missing on Wild Cards. When I saw the book come up for review on Netgalley, there was no thinking about it. I'd pressed the request button right away. Simone Elkeles is a very show more talented writer and I just couldn't resist reading whatever story she'd come up with this time.

I'm extremely happy to say that Wild Cards met all my expectations. The novel had everything a young adult audience wants - sweet romance, some drama, a cute boy with an unnatural amount of pain squeezed into his heart, a girl with problems of her own... It had it all, wrapped up in a brilliantly written novel.

Now, I've stumbled upon some reviews who point out the lack of football games here, even though the story is enveloped into the football field. To this I can only reply like this - I'm not a sports person, so I could honestly care less. I actually liked how the story revolved around Derek and Ashtyn, showing us how by being brought to live together, their lives changed completely. Their whole perspectives on the world changed. They grew and became better for themselves and better for each other.

Derek was a sweetheart, really. Sure, he was pretending to be a bad boy, but all he truly was was a lonely guy with a huge plate of guilt served in front of him. His mom had died of cancer while he'd been in a game. He never forgave himself for not being in the hospital instead. So, to punish himself, he quit football. And decided to close off to the world, push people far away from himself and act like a jerk. He would have continued down this destructive path, had it not been for Ashtyn. And his grandmother. That woman knew how to deal with Derek even though he'd never met her in his life. I loved the cute old lady with all her weird mannerisms.

Being a girl full of passion for the sport (although she was the only girl in an all guy team), Ashtyn worked herself hard on the field. So much so, that her team voted her varsity captain. Cool, eh? Yeah... except her scumbag boyfriend got angry and jealous about it and tried whatever he could to ruin Ashtyn's reputation from then on. And her dad, whose appreciation she craved like a fish craves water, didn't really seemed to care. It took all of Derek's craftiness to bring this girl back on the star where she belonged.

Sweet, funny and full of dreams, Wild Cards is a great novel to take your mind off of reality. show less

2.5? Picked this one up because it's a contender for this year's RITA Awards in the YA category.

Three-star moments here and there, but looking at this one objectively, entirely, just as a book, a two-star rating is generous.

You already know this story: rich, perfect, white girl with a secret on the right side of the tracks, beautiful, bad, non-white boy with no future on the wrong side brought together by... yes, a school assignment! Stir in unnecessary bet, and you can see where this is show more going.

Such a simple story is easy to get into, and I truly did enjoy this one. The characters are flatter than flat, the boy thinks like a girl, the girl has no distinguishing non-physical characteristics whatsoever (the better for readers to insert themselves into the romance?), but it hit the spot. It's a light, extremely easy read, and a great pick for (older) reluctant readers.

It is a little long, though, for what it is. The romantic tension was built up convincingly in the first half of the book, but things deteriorated quickly once Brittany and Alex got together. It felt like a quota of cut and paste scenes from the teen movie canon had to be included, and the more that were added, the crappier the writing became. I thought the last chapter was especially stupid until I got to the epilogue, which takes stupid to a new, never before seen level of suck.

Traces of weirdly outdated-seeming sexism and racism color every page of the book, and that did get in the way of my enjoying it many times. But I think this is still worth picking up if you need a light distraction and a good romance and you can step back a bit from its MANY failings. I do hope something else wins the RITA, though. Romance readers are smarter, and deserve better than this. show less

Rules of Attraction is the second book of Simone Elekeles’s Perfect Chemistry series, which follows the three Fuentes brothers. After reading and loving the first book, Perfect Chemistry, I’ve been eagerly looking forward to continuing the series, and I wasn’t disappointed in the least with this second installment, which is middle brother, Carlos’s story. Toward the end of Perfect Chemistry, the family had moved to Mexico to escape the gang that presented a danger to oldest brother, show more Alex, but when Alex left to go back to Chicago and end things with the gang once and for all, Carlos became the man of house. Since Alex decided to stay in the states to be with his girlfriend, Brittany, and attend college, Carlos has been holding down the fort as best he can, which unfortunately meant joining a gang himself. Now his mother and Alex insist that he return to the states to live with Alex for his senior year of high school, but Carlos arrives with a chip on his shoulder. He tries to make the best of it, but eventually the gang life catches up with him, when a fellow student plants drugs in his locker as a test. After he’s caught, Alex makes arrangements with his college psychology professor, who agrees to become Carlos’s guardian. Now he’s living under the same roof with Kiara, a girl from school who acted as his peer guide when he first arrived and who annoys him, but in an intriguing way. Soon he realizes that even though Kiara is nothing like the girls he usually hangs out with, he’s experiencing feelings for her that he’s never felt for anyone before. But if he continues down the same path, the gang could get them both killed.

Carlos resented having to leave Chicago in the first place and felt betrayed when Alex stayed in the states and left him and his mom and younger brother in Mexico. He did his best to help keep the family afloat financially, but the slave wages he earned at the sugar mill didn’t really cut it. Then he got fired and had few options left besides joining a gang. Now his mom and Alex are forcing him to move to Colorado to live with Alex, something that he doesn’t really want to do, so he can be pretty antagonistic at times. He’s also down on the idea of love, because his girlfriend from Chicago dumped him, not wanting a long-distance relationship. Believing that Brittany is to blame for Alex’s actions, he doesn’t think much of her or his brother’s relationship with her either. Then he starts high school, where he meets Kiara. At first, he thinks she’s just weird and doesn’t really want her company, but she starts to earn his respect when she plays a prank on him to get back at him for his stinky attitude. Then the drugs appear in his locker and he ends up living with her family. Having grown up in poverty, he views them as rich folks, even though they appear to just be upper middle class, and he doesn’t want to be there. But gradually the love and trust of a good family starts to melt the icy sheath around his heart. As he gets to really know her, Kiara becomes a whole lot more attractive than he thought she was at the start, and having a “little brother” and parental figures turns out to be less of a drag than he thought it would be. In fact, he comes to love them enough that he would sacrifice his life to keep them safe from the gang. Carlos is a bad boy with an arrogant ego, but underneath the tough guy veneer, he exhibits a deep vulnerability. Many people he’s cared about – his father, brother, and girlfriend – have all left him, and he fears that if he allows himself to care about someone else, they’ll betray him, too. Although Carlos may have done some bad things in the past, he has a genuinely good heart, and I love how he gradually comes around. He’s very protective of those he loves and more than redeems himself by the end.

Kiara is the consummate good girl and a little on the geeky side, not in the science-y sense, but she is an exemplary student who is a bit socially awkward, having just one best friend. She loves her family and is a great daughter and big sister to her six-year-old brother. She has a nice balance between sometimes being softer and more girly, while often being a little tomboyish. Two of her biggest interests are sports and restoring her classic Monte Carlo. Because she’s such a good student, Kiara is asked to be a peer guide for a new kid at school, but from the minute she meets Carlos, he rubs her the wrong way. He’s very attractive and he knows it, and he has a bad attitude to boot. She also immediately pegs him as a player who only wants a girl who’ll take off her clothes for him. However, when he reacts to her prank by showing her respect rather than getting upset, she becomes more intrigued by him. Once he’s living with her family, Carlos still tends to push people away, but Kiara also sees glimmers of a softer side underneath the tough guy persona that makes her start liking him more and more until she’s madly in love with him. Kiara is a very relatable girl who’s also quite admirable. She may not have a ton of friends, but she’s confident enough in her own skin that she doesn’t care a great deal what others think of how she dresses or what she likes to do. I think it’s because of that confidence and her strong family life that she’s able to be a solid rock for Carlos to lean on even though he acts like he doesn’t need anyone. She’s intelligent enough to know when she’s in over her head, too, and trusts her parents, asking for their help. She’s also mature enough to make good relationship decisions.

Rules of Attraction skirts the line between Young Adult and New Adult Romance, but since Carlos and Kiara are still in high school, the YA designation seems to be the more pertinent one, so this is where I’ll give my evaluation on potentially objectionable content. Teens are seen at parties getting drunk and high while consuming both alcohol and drugs, and Carlos gets in trouble for having drugs his locker although they were planted there and aren’t his. Carlos was in a gang in Mexico and that association follows him to Colorado, leading to depictions of gang violence. He’s brutally beaten up in one scene, and there is a shoot-out in another. There’s a fair bit of language, including several uses of the f-word and occasional crude sexual references. Carlos engages in a heavy make-out session with a girl at a party that almost leads to sex. Carlos and Kiara share some passionate kisses that create strong sexual tension. They discuss sexual matters fairly openly with each other, as well as with her father and her best friend who happens to be gay. In one scene they remove their shirts and engage in heavy petting, and eventually they do make love at a later time. The prelude to that is shown in some moderate but tasteful detail. However, the door is closed on the actual act. I have to give them credit, though, for having a mature discussion about it and for using protection, which is more than I often see in adult romances. However, given the volume of mature content, I’d probably only recommend the book for older teens of about sixteen and up, who wouldn’t be bothered by anything I mentioned.

Rules of Attraction ended up being another awesome read in this series. Carlos can be a little abrasive at times, but he’d no sooner piss me off than he’d show some small bit of character development that would help me to see that it was all an act to keep people at arm’s length because he’s afraid to care. Kiara is the relatable girl-next-door who’s smart, savvy, has a sense of humor, and can express her feelings without being immature or bitchy. I absolutely loved the family aspects of the story. Even though Carlos hasn’t had a perfect family life, his culture leads him to love and respect his family even when they’re driving him crazy. Kiara has a model family who always show care and concern for one another. I love her parents who don’t hover, but allow her to make her own choices and learn from her mistakes while offering healthy guidance. They also take Carlos in without question and show him respect, making him totally welcome in their family activities, while Kiara’s dad is a strong believer in second chances. He lays down ground rules in an attempt to set Carlos on the right path, while showing how much he cares in every word and deed, right up to and including risking everything to save Carlos from the gang life. Carlos and Kiara are the perfect example of opposites attracting and I think they made a great couple. I loved the far in the future epilogue for them, which was the perfect ending for the story. I can’t say enough good things about Rules of Attraction and this series in general. Two keepers in a row has earned Simone Elkeles a spot on my favorite authors list. I very much look forward to reading the last book, Chain Reaction, to see Luis, the final Fuentes brother, get his HEA ending, as well as checking out her other work. show less