Mild spoilers are present! They don't give away much that you probably could have already guessed, but they are still there.
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Being Jamie Baker by Kelly Oram
353 pages, Kindle Edition
Finished on 2/1/2013
Genres: Young Adult, Some Action, Fantasy, Romance
Synopsis via
GoodReads:
"Most superhero stories start with a meteor shower or a nasty insect bite, but mine actually starts with a kiss..."
An accident that should end in tragedy instead gives seventeen-year-old Jamie Baker a slew of uncontrollable superhuman abilities.
To keep her secret safe Jamie socially exiles herself, earning the title of Rocklin High’s resident ice queen. But during a supercharged encounter with star quarterback Ryan Miller she literally kisses anonymity goodbye. Now the annoyingly irresistible Ryan will stop at nothing to melt the heart of the ice queen and find out what makes her so special.
Unfortunately, Ryan is not the only person on to her secret. Will Jamie learn to contain her unstable powers before being discovered by the media or turned into a government lab rat?
More importantly, can she throw Ryan Miller off her trail before falling in love with him?
Motivation to Read It: I was asked to read Oram's second and third books and absolutely fell in love with her work. I bought
Baker a couple weeks ago.
Review: Another favorite for me. Oram has officially won me on her side for the rest of eternity. I didn't realize there were people with this amount of talent. Oram never fails to captivate me within the first few chapters. At this point, I'm sure Oram's work will be an obsession for me haha.
Jamie Baker's super hero story begins with a kiss. It isn't really your regular superhero story with a definite villain. There was the handsome, egotistic ball player (quarterback to be specific). The equally egotistic popular girls (and cheerleaders, of course). The super annoying reporter. And the team of evil scientists. I mean, really. No one has this many "evils." But yet Kelly Oram has written the story to perfection.
But let me stop my rambling. Jamie Baker was just trying to make it through the rest of her high school career. She wasn't asking for trouble at all, but over the months after that superhero-story-starting kiss, she has been through more emotions than she bargained for. You couldn't help but be wrenched into the pain with her, or the happiness, or whatever emotion it happened to be.
Overall, the characters were so lovable and adorable and frustrating. Everything you have to have in a character to make them seem like regular people. Even during the moments I felt for Jamie, for example, she would make (in my opinion) bad decisions, and I would want to slap the living poop out of her. But that was what made it so interesting for me to keep reading. The characters
were people to me. They were just trying to make it through to the beginning of the rest of their lives, simply doing what they thought was the best for them.
I have to admit that after a while, I started falling for Ryan. He is just so lovable, and he tried so hard to get Jamie to let him in. You have to give the boy some credit: he was trying so hard. Then when he actually got the chance. Man, you wanna talk about a happy kid. He was so joyous, and it was so obvious that he really wanted to get to Jamie for who she really was and not the mannequin she hid herself behind at school with her peers.
The plot traveled fast yet smoothly at the same time. It kept pulling you in, and you would have ten percent of the book done before you really even noticed.
I can't wait until the sequel to this comes out. It's going to be absolutely amazing. Although, I look forward to all of Oram's work, so I think this will be a good wait for me.
Shelf-Worthy
