Shut Out by Kody Keplinger

Synopsis

Most high school sports teams have rivalries with other schools. At Hamilton High, it's a civil war: the football team versus the soccer team. And for her part, Lissa is sick of it. Her quarterback boyfriend, Randy, is always ditching her to go pick a fight with the soccer team or to prank their locker room. And on three separate occasions Randy's car has been egged while he and Lissa were inside, making out. She is done competing with a bunch of sweaty boys for her own boyfriend's attention

Then Lissa decides to end the rivalry once and for all: She and the other players' girlfriends go on a hookup strike. The boys won't get any action from them until the football and soccer teams make peace. What they don't count on is a new sort of rivalry: an impossible girls-against-boys showdown that hinges on who will cave to their libidos first. But what Lissa never sees coming is her own sexual tension with the leader of the boys, Cash Sterling…

I have huge love for Kody Keplinger but was very late reading The Duff. Once I had though I ordered her other two books as quickly as possible. I adore her heroines; flawed, damaged and real. Initially, Lissa doesn't seem to fit this mould - after all she has a steady boyfriend in Randy and seems grounded and mature. However, it isn't long before the cracks appear. Her mother died in an accident that left her dad in a wheelchair. Desperate to ensure that nothing awful befalls her family again she craves control. However, she suffers from severe anxiety - her need to keep everything ticking over almost overwhelms her. Her adult brother doesn't tell her where he's going and her dad keeps sneaking food he shouldn't have. To top it all off the soccer and football teams at Hamilton High have a longstanding rivalry that is seriously upsetting Lissa. Randy constantly leaves her to settle scores, even when they're having a bit of erm, alone time in his car.

And so the "hookup" strike begins. The girls band together in an attempt to stop the crazy rivalry after a soccer player gets seriously hurt. For me the book took off at this point. I already had a great deal of sympathy for Lissa before but her character is laid bare during the strike. With the help of best friend Chloe we start to see the person Lissa could be if she wasn't restrained by her need for control. Chloe is a fabulous character; quite open about her love of sex and often shunned by other girls at school because of it. However, as is always the way, the boys don't get criticised for being single and having multiple partners. In the many meet-ups that the girls have to coordinate their attack Chloe is often openly attacked for her lifestyle. Chloe, the opposite to Lissa, refuses to let these attacks effect her and stands up for herself. I think it's interesting and refreshing that the author didn't feel the need to give Chloe a moral storyline and she allowed Chloe to stay true to herself throughout.

Of course the main part of this story is Lissa, Randy and Chase. I thought I pretty much understood her and Randy's relationship from the beginning but I was mistaken. Then there's Chase who surprised me by not being someone who I would have picked for Lissa. Normally it's pretty clear how things are going to go but I really wasn't sure about Chase to begin with. As the plot progresses Lissa loses sight of her goals and gets blindsided her own personal agenda. I loved this part of the plot, it really illustrated how driven she was. As she starts to step out of her confines she makes a few mistakes at first but the ending is wonderful. Shut Out was a bit of a slow grower for me but at about the one third point I couldn't put it down. The only sad thing is that now I have to wait for a new Kody Keplinger book to be published.

A Midsummer's Nightmare by Kody Keplinger

Synopsis

Whitley Johnson's dream summer with her divorcé dad has turned into a nightmare. She's just met his new fiancée and her kids. The fiancée's son? Whitley's one-night stand from graduation night. Just freakin' great.

Worse, she totally doesn't fit in with her dad's perfect new country-club family. So Whitley acts out. She parties. Hard. So hard she doesn't even notice the good things right under her nose: a sweet little future stepsister who is just about the only person she's ever liked, a best friend (even though Whitley swears she doesn't "do" friends), and a smoking-hot guy who isn't her stepbrother...at least, not yet. It will take all three of them to help Whitley get through her anger and begin to put the pieces of her family together.

Filled with authenticity and raw emotion, Whitley is Kody Keplinger's most compelling character to date: a cynical Holden Caulfield-esque girl you will wholly care about.

After reading The Duff I couldn't wait to get my hands on everything else that Kody Keplinger had written. I haven't had a chance to read Shut Out yet but when A Midsummer's Nightmare appeared through the door yesterday I had to start it. So, 6.30 Sunday morning I opened it, just to read the first few chapters of course. I didn't put it down until I finished it later on that morning. I was drawn in by Whitley's anger. The story starts with the morning after the night before and she's trying to escape from her one night stand. Once home her mum isn't worried she's been out all night as she thought she was at Nona's house but Whitley hasn't been friends with Nona for four years. All she wants is to go to her dad's condo and spend the summer like they always do, drinking, chatting and lying in the sun.

When she meets her dad he tells her that they're not going to the condo, instead they're off to the small town of Hamilton. Not only that but when they get there she meets Sylvia, his fiancée - yet another thing he's forgotten to mention. Her son is Whitley's one night stand from graduation so things couldn't get any worse surely? Whitley has created a massive wall around herself and as the book develops we start to learn more about why she reaches for a bottle of tequila when things go wrong. It could be easy to dismiss her as bringing all her troubles to her own door but there's something very compelling about the rage inside her. I was desperate to find out what had happened to her after her parents divorce. I was touched by her relationship to Bailey, Nathan's little sister, who's nearly fourteen - the same age as Whitley when she had her first drink. Bailey is who Whitley could have been if she'd had some decent and compassionate parenting after the divorce. She's all lightness and innocence where Whitley is cynical and abrasive but their relationship works nonetheless.

Obviously in a story like this the reader is hoping for a great emotional story arc - for Whitley to grow and learn etc etc. Yes, I wanted that too - a happy ending, for her to be in a better place by the last page. But on this journey all sorts of things are thrown up. Why do we call a girl a whore when men are rarely criticised for the same behaviour? Why do parent's act like children then get surprised when their children don't do what they want? Why don't people understand that no means no means no? Why do we criticise the victims of abuse? Why do we insist on labelling people as this and that without even asking ourselves what's happened to them in their past?

What I love about Kody Keplinger is that her characters are real, they don't hold back in action or word and her books are all the richer for this.