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Saturday 30 November 2013

A Review for Being Jamie Baker by Kelly Oram

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Posted by Melanie 
Release Date: June 14th, 2010 
Finished Date: October 25th, 2013
Publishers: Bluefields
Genre: YA, Paranormal, Romance 
Source: For Review
Format: eBook
Pages: 353
Buy: Amazon UK / Amazon US 

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?

The Review: Being Jamie Baker was a fun, easy read but also dealt with real issues and was quite emotional too and I would say that if you took out the paranormal element it could have easily converted to a YA contemp read. Jamie was a great character to get to know and it was very easy to connect with her. I thought it was very realistic how she was portrayed as an ‘Ice Queen’, she did keep everyone at arms length & when you read her story you understand why she puts on this façade but that all changes when Ryan strolls into her life. I love how they met, if was fun & daring and an awesome ice breaker between them, opening up a gap in the façade to let Ryan see a glimpse of the girl underneath….and hooking him instantly. I really liked how their relationship unfolded, I admired Ryan for his persistence, I felt so much for Jamie as she fought to keep her feelings sheltered in an effort to not only protect herself but Ryan too and sometimes my heart broke for her especially with how much upheaval her life has gone through.
The storyline was really good, easy to read and get involved with. As I said there are real issues, emotional issues but also there’s the paranormal element and as the blurb tells us – Jamie is a superhero – I like her powers and how she came about them, it all ties into her issues and only Jamie knows the real story of what happened, so we discover it along with all of the other characters. A lot of the book is devoted to the relationship aspect as our main characters begin a relationship but it is through Ryan’s determination to uncover the real Jamie Baker that we find out about her powers, he encourages her to test herself, to challenge her preconceptions and is such a positive influence that I think he could make anyone a better person. Of course there is your usual high school drama and some of it was very harsh on Jamie, especially when she started to open up because when you hide from your emotions for so long and let yourself feel again, it’s intense, the feelings are amplified and that adds to the drama too. The threat comes from unexpected sources and brings about a major twist towards the end but also opens up what could be a series threat and I look forward to that as much as I look forward to more from Jamie & Ryan. I would really like to see her put her powers to good use, she manages to control them a lot in this and we see some of their potential plus we get a couple of instances of her using them to help in this and I liked that, so hopefully more of that in the next book. This is a great start to the series though. 

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