Stealing Bases

Title: Stealing Bases (Pretty Tough #4)

Author: Keri Mikulski

Publisher: Razorbill

Year Published: 2011

Pages: 271

Price : Rp. 50.000 (Kinokuniya sale at FX)

Former drama queen Kylie Collins had decided to start her junior year as a new person and forget everything about her and Zachary Murphy, her ex-boyfriend. She had decided to be nicer to other people and concentrate only in softball in order to get the ticket to UCLA. But everything in her life was so messed up currently. Her parents had been divorced and her yoga instructor father who had decided not to use his ex-wife's money had brought Kylie to move into his friend's guest house, a.k.a Zachary Murphy's guest house. Kylie couldn't reach her mother who had moved to New York. And worse, she was threatened to lose her UCLA ticket. A new transferred student, Amber McDonald, was a great pitcher and it didn't take so long for her to snag Kylie's position as a starter pitcher.

Kylie put a poker face in front of her friends but deep down inside she was broken. Only Zachary knew her true feeling. Zachary, her childhood friend who knew her best but also the one who had betrayed her and broke her heart.

Was it right to forgive Zachary and to give him one more chance? Could Kylie handle all these problems and stand strong?

Kylie, Kylie, Kylie..What a complicated character she is. In Head Games, I had been introduced to her possessive and over-reactive attitude, who wouldn't hesitate to ruin every girl at school who dare enough to put her hand to Zachary, even after Zachary clearly stated that he and Kylie were over. But why and how she could become that kind of girl, it wasn't explained. Kylie was just looked like a psycho and mean girl. In Stealing Bases, I --as well as other readers-- was introduced to the other side of hers.

Kylie was actually an introvert person. She had never share her life details and her emotions to other people, even to her best friend, Missy. She had never tell anybody about her true feeling to Zach and the misfortune that happened to her after her parents' divorce. From the outside, people only knew her as the athletic, beautiful, but a bit lunatic. No one knew that deep down inside she gradually felt stress and broken by things that happened to her after she finally couldn't stand it anymore. Not that I am agree with Kylie's choice or what she had done, but it is understandable. There is this insecurity that her friends might be leaving her if they knew the truth.

About Kylie's relationship with Zachary, as I've said before, she is such a complicated person, and so did her relationship with Zachary. The history between Kylie and Zach was actually pretty sweet. They had been knowing each other since childhood, including each other's secret. And that's why being Zachary's girl friend was very important to Kylie. Too bad, Kylie-Zachary's love story was not as sweet as ones we often read or watch in those romantic stories.

I love everything about this novel. I love how Keri Mikulski decided to put more reality to the story, I love every detail about every character, I love how the characters interacted in this novel. And especially, I love Kylie. Yes she wasn't perfect and she had made wrong choices a couple of times. But reading how she walked through every difficulty was very inspiring and touching and yes, I felt sympathy toward her.  This novel is unique. I think this novel has a great message to the teenagers too. And last but not least, I also enjoyed the sport aspect in this novel. It was told in quite detail but didn't distract the readers from the main story.

Stealing Bases is quite a good read. It is entertaining and also educating. I love this one better than Head Games.