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↳ PARKER FADLEY CRACKED UP TO BE by Courtney Summers (2008)

“No one will notice how wrong you are if everything you do ends up right. The rest becomes incidental. So incidental that, after a while, you forget. Maybe you are perfect. Good. It must be true. Who can argue with results? You’re not so wrong after all. So you buy into it and you go crazy maintain it. Except it creeps up on you sometimes, that you’re not right. Imperfect. Bad. So you snap your fingers and it goes away.

Until something you can’t ignore happens and you see it all over yourself.”

You think I ever stopped wanting to die after the motel? I ask. You think a feeling like that just goes away?

Cracked Up To Be by Courtney Summers

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Review: Cracked Up To Be by Courtney Summers Rating: 3/5

"I get caught up in outcomes. I convince myself they're truths. No one will notice how wrong you are if everything you do ends up right."

Parker Fadley is picture-perfect. Popular, pretty and peerless in intelligence. But the party-girl in her tends to mess everything up. Now she's walking the fine line of the well-behaved, atoning for accidentally getting a little bit drunk on school property. But no matter who asks her about her change in demeanour, Parker can't tell them why. At least, not yet.

Courtney Summers really has a thing for writing about missing girls and the way their disappearance messes up the people they leave behind, huh? Honestly, it's kind of draining; especially since I've read them in reverse publication order so they're less clever and less impactful each time. But luckily, Summers knack for writing dynamic female leads has always been her strong suit.

While the cover quotes definitely oversell the book as a whole, they do justice to Parker Fadley. She is frank and fractured and fascinating. Her dry wit and her cadence were dazzling and trying to unpuzzle this mess of a girl was exciting, even though the solution felt a little run of the mill in the end.

Though I do have to give some kudos: this was originally published in 2008 and actually ends with the mentally ill lead getting the help she needs! There are books being published now that don't bother with this so the positive rep is well-appreciated.

An intriguing book with a readable plot but that is ultimately saved by the compelling characters.

Warnings: Alcohol abuse, PTSD, panic attacks, accidental animal death, references to drug use, suicide attempts, self-harm and murder.