A love story that nails every goal with heart to spare.
A figure skater starts over as an ice hockey goalie in this YA contemporary romance.
Seventeen-year-old Willow Covington has reluctantly moved back to small-town Minnesota, where she hasn’t lived since grade school. An Achilles injury and rapidly dwindling funds derailed her full-time pursuit of a professional figure skating career at an elite Colorado training center. A chance meeting with Brodie “Wind” Windom, a very cute ice hockey star whose father owns the town rink, leads Willow to a possible redirection of her energy: goalie on the all-boys club team. Brodie and Willow make a deal: In exchange for extra time on the ice to build up her figure skating skills again, he’ll show her the ropes of what it means to be a goalie. Soon, flirty insults like “Toe Pick” and “Puck Head” are flying as fast as stray pucks, and, after a successful stint on the club team, Willow wins the high school team’s goalie position. The catch? No fraternizing between players allowed. As Brodie’s home life—no mother; alcoholic, frequently absent father; and a beloved, severely asthmatic younger brother—grows more fraught and he and Willow embark on a secret relationship, she receives the opportunity of a lifetime that will reignite her Olympic figure skating dreams. Will love—and hockey—prevail? Bestselling authors Rush and Blount have crafted a teen romance that’s as fast-paced as a championship match, with witty dialogue, alternating narration from Brodie and Willow, and depth in every character, not just the two protagonists. Budding hockey player Willow faces realistic obstacles from the outside—not everyone is on board with a female goalie—and the inside. Does her heart truly lie with her old sport or her new one? Brodie also has a fully developed character arc as he learns to open his heart to Willow and accept help from his community when his father’s alcoholism reaches a destructive peak. The book’s ending is both satisfying and well earned.
A love story that nails every goal with heart to spare.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-68281-576-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Several yards short of a touchdown.
A transgender boy starting over at a new school falls hard for a popular cheerleader with a reputation to protect in this debut.
On the first day of senior year, transgender boy Pony locks eyes with cisgender cheerleader Georgia. They both have pasts they want to leave behind. No one at Hillcrest High knows that Pony is transgender, and he intends to keep it that way. Georgia’s last boyfriend shook her trust in boys, and now she’s determined to forget him. As mutual attraction draws them together, Pony and Georgia must decide what they are willing to risk for a relationship. Pony’s best friend, Max, who is also transgender, disapproves of Pony’s choice to live stealth; this disagreement leads to serious conflict in their relationship. Meanwhile, Georgia and Pony behave as if Pony’s trans identity was a secret he was lying to her about rather than private information for him to share of his own volition. The characters only arrive at a hopeful resolution after Pony pays high physical and emotional prices. McSmith places repeated emphasis on the born-in-the-wrong-body narrative when the characters discuss trans identities. Whiteness is situated as the norm, and all main characters are white.
Several yards short of a touchdown. (Fiction. 14-17)Pub Date: May 26, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-294317-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
The shelves are already crowded with teens-training-for-space stories; there’s no need to make room for this one.
Teens become astronauts in record time for an inaugural space mission.
After losing his family to “the greatest flood Rome has ever known,” skilled white Italian swimmer Leo Danieli would never have expected that in his darkest moment he would be drafted by the European Space Agency to attend the International Space Training Camp, where teens will train to terraform and colonize Jupiter’s moon Europa for human settlement. California native Naomi Ardalan, a second-generation Iranian-American, has also been chosen for her expertise in science and technology. During a period of violent climate change worldwide, Earth’s governments are desperate to draft teens for a space mission for which they have only a few weeks in which to prepare. Twenty-four teen finalists, many orphaned by cataclysmic natural disasters, have been chosen from all over the world to compete for this space colonization mission. Warnings come to Leo and Naomi that there is a more sinister aspect to this mission, especially after things go tragically awry with other candidates during the training. The relationship that develops between Naomi and Leo feels forced, as if their meeting necessitates speedy deployment of a romantic cliché. The use of predictable plot devices, along with the fundamentally ludicrous premise, undermines any believability that would make a reader invest in such an elaborate space journey.
The shelves are already crowded with teens-training-for-space stories; there’s no need to make room for this one. (Science fiction. 14-17)Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-265894-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
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