A Midsummer's Nightmare by Kody Keplinger

Title: A Midsummer's Nightmare

Author: Kody Keplinger

Publisher: Poppy

Release Date: June 5, 2012

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository

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? Happens to be whatshisname, 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. 

So far, I have loved everything Kody Keplinger has written and it was no different with A Midsummer's Nightmare. I would eve go so far as to say that it is my favorite of Kody Keplinger's books. It was seriously awesome.

For the past four years, Whitley's life has been about the parties and hooking up with random guys. And graduation night is no different. The next morning she wakes up next to a boy she doesn't know and makes a quick exit. Now Whitley is ready for a summer with her dad, only to have him surprise her with a soon-to-be stepmom and two step siblings. One of which is Nathan, the guy from graduation night. After that revelation, Whitley's summer can only get better. Except it doesn't really. But with a new friend and a family she might actually like, things start looking up. And Nathan isn't her stepbrother just yet.

A Midsummer's Nightmare was simply an amazing book. I'm no exactly sure how I can accurately describe just how amazing it was. I loved Kody Keplinger's two other books, but I simply adored this one. Right when I started reading, I knew I would have trouble putting the book down and it ended up being true. The story itself in A Midsummer's Nightmare was fantastic. It went places I didn't think it woud go and I liked that it did that. I especially liked al the different relationships Kody Keplinger presented in this story. None of them were perfect and each one had a different degree of dysfunctionality. But that's what made them so great and in turn made the story so great. 

Kody Keplinger has a knack for making me completely love characters I wouldn't like under other circumstances. That was the case with Whitley. On the surface she's your typical party girl, but once you dig a little deeper you realize that it's all really just a cover. And that's what made me love Whitley. Little by little she realized she didn't have to be all alone. And part of that was Nathan. Despite what we learn about his past, Nathan is a really good person and good for Whitley...though those aren't his only qualities. But he's not the only one who's good for Whitley like that. The same can be said for Bailey, Harrison and Sylvia. All of them ended up showing Whitley that she doesn't have to shut herself out from everyone around her. And I loved seeing Bianca and Wesley again, however briefly.

A Midsummer's Nightmare was an absolutely fantastic read. Kody Keplinger really knows her stuff and her books just keep getting better. If you haven't read one of her books yet, you should because you are seriously missing out.

Shut Out by Kody Keplinger

Title: Shut Out

Author: Kody Keplinger

Publisher: Poppy

Release Date: September 5, 2011

Source: Purchased

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

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 or haze a freshman. 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.

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. And Lissa never sees her own sexual tension with the leader of the boys, Cash Sterling, coming. In this hilarious and romantic reimagining of Aristophanes' Lysistrata, the battle of boys against girls is on.

Over the last year Kody Keplinger has definitely become one of my favorite contemporary author and Shut Out has solidified that position. It was a story I enjoyed from start to finish and Kody Keplinger definitely knows how to write a good contemporary story.

Lissa is sick and tired of coming second to the feud between her school's football and soccer teams. And what girl wouldn't get annoyed when her boyfriend runs out on their make out session because the soccer team just pulled a prank. But she doesn't think the feud will ever end seeing as it's been going on for ten years already. So instead Lissa decides to give the boys incentive to stop fighting. She and the other girlfriends of the football and soccer players pledge to go on a sex strike until the two teams end their ridiculous feud. But what Lissa doesn't anticipate is the boys retaliating, attempting to seduce the girls to get them to go against their pledge. But what Lissa really doesn't see coming is Cash Sterling, the one boy who might just be able to break Lissa's resolve. It will all come down to who will be able to resist the call of their libido the longest...or so Lissa thought at first.

Until I heard about Shut Out I had never heard about Aristophanes' Lysistrata. When I found out more about both the book and the play I knew this had the potential to be a fantastic story. And Kody Keplinger definitely proved that. The story was incredible and I was drawn in right from page one. The way she retold Aristophanes' play was done in a creative way. I especially liked how she made the rivalry be between two teams at the same school which isn't something you see that often. It was definitely a story I enjoyed and I felt completely drawn in, to the point that it sometimes felt like I was a part of the story. I don't read that much contemporary books, and Kody Keplinger is an author that definitely makes them worth it. 

I love Lissa. She was definitely a great character and I felt like I could really relate to her. I've never been in the same situation but if I ever was, odds are I would react in the same way. And I mean what self-respecting girl wouldn't? My only problem with her was that it took her a while to figure out that Randy was a complete jerk. Which leads me to Randy and what a first class jerk he was. I don't want to say too much but basically he was not a very nice person, and that's putting it nicely. And that leaves Cash Sterling. At first, I didn't really think about him too much but then he began being more present in the story. At which point I figured out that he was a super sweet person and the polar opposite of Randy. Plus it sounded like he was rather easy on the eyes.

Shut Out was an absolutely fantastic read and I loved every page of it. Kody Keplinger once again proved how great a writer she is and I can't wait to read more of her future books.