Review: Stealing Parker (Hundred Oaks #2) by Miranda Kenneally

 Source: Received an ARC for an honest review from Raincoast Books

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

Release Date: Already released.
Number of Pages: 256 (Paperback)

Description from Goodreads:

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?

I really enjoyed Catching Jordan, so I was looking forward to Stealing Parker, and I wasn't disappointed!

While Parker was extremely different from Jordan, I absolutely loved her story! In Parker's place I doubt that I would've done the same things, but I was still able to understand her choices. Her logic wasn't super sound, but I could understand why she chose to kiss all the boys that she could because she was such an honest narrator. At least to the reader she was pretty honest. We knew that she didn't want to be seen as anything like her mother and that she was hurting because of the way everyone had treated her after the scandal, so I loved seeing her finally open herself up a bit and let people in...most of all, I loved seeing her grow closer to Will (a.k.a. Corndog). :P

Right from the beginning of Stealing Parker, Parker was pretty much a train wreck waiting to happen, so I wasn't too surprised when she got herself into an extremely serious situation and had trouble getting out of it. I kind of wanted to shake her because of the things that she was doing, but again...I was still able to understand her reasons for what she did. I think that's the most wonderful part about Miranda Kenneally's storytelling ability...she has a way of making me understand where her characters are coming from, and that's not something all authors are able to do. So, while I didn't necessarily like what Parker was doing sometimes, I still genuinely liked her as a character.

With each additional book in this series, I grow to love Miranda Kenneally's characters and her writing ability more and more. Each character's story builds off of the one before it, and I love seeing characters from the earlier books when they pop up in the later ones. :) I love how complex the characters are, both Jordan and Parker, and how the characters have things that they're passionate about. Most of all, I love how the characters have flaws, but they're willing to learn and grow from them. Miranda Kenneally has crafted a wonderful series, which has transformed the whole growing up and getting to know yourself trope into something extremely versatile that readers can relate to even if their own situation is completely different.

I loved Stealing Parker, and would recommend both it and the rest of the series to contemporary fans. I think you'll especially like it if you like your main characters complex and if you like when they are willing to learn from their mistakes. You'll also like it if you're a fan of amazing characterization and fantastic chemistry between characters. :)

Does Stealing Parker sound like something you'd like to read?

Also...I have to say, I love how this cover looks with my blog background! :D