Review: Wrecked by Elle Casey

Title: Wrecked
Author: Elle Casey
Publisher: Createspace
Publishing Date: January 1st 2012
Pages: 297
Genre: YA Adventure/Survival
Series: Stand Alone
Source: Kindle

Goodreads Summary:

If you liked The Breakfast Club and The Swiss Family Robinson, you'll love WRECKED! An ill-fated Caribbean cruise and four teenagers: a nerd, a jock, a mouse, and a beauty queen…an island, a treehouse, some nefarious interlopers…life and death…fear and loathing…love and laughter. Follow Jonathan, Kevin, Candi and Sarah as they find their typical high school lives and their worlds totally WRECKED

Review:
I discovered this book on a friends list and thought it sounded quite interesting. It’s a different story than most out there right now in the YA world so I grabbed and read it. I could not stop once I started. It was fantastic find.

The story is about 4 teenagers- a geek, a shy girl, a popular girl, and a jock. Two pairs of siblings, a brother and a sister each, one set of twins, the other just a year apart. They go on a cruise with their parents, the ship sinks, they escape on a lifeboat and end up on an island with no way to communicate they are alive or where they are located. The four make the best of it and learn many lessons and discover who they really are. The story is a little bit of a coming of age, a little bit of an adventure, and a little bit of a mystery/thriller. It’s all wrapped up into a great book.

The characters were very well developed and I loved each one! Jonathan, the geek, he is funny in a nerdy way, introverted, and has thick skin and a big brain. His younger sister, Candi, is the shy girl who just blends in, kind of invisible most of the time but really wants to be friends with the in crowd and has a huge crush on Kevin. Kevin is the jock, he can be real sweetheart but is also a user of sorts. Kevin’s twin sister, Sara, is the mean girl. She runs the school, she knows it, and she doesn’t have time for the little people. If you put all these personalities together on a deserted island, comedy is born. There is more than just comedy. The foursome learns much about themselves and others and they learn some hard lessons in self absorption, stereo types, and respect for others. They also learn the grass isn’t greener on either side of the fence. As days, go buy they become friends and even more than friends a family.

The writing pace was great for me. I kept turning the pages. There were many surprises and some obvious actions and reactions. All in all I had a lot of fun with this book. In the end I found myself smiling and tearing up. I know corny but it was a feel good book.

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