For any woman who has ever played high school basketball, ever had her first heart-aching crush during those years, and ever struggled with family issues, the issues of her teammates, school problems, and team-gelling problems, this book is for you. And if you're a teen who plays high school sports and has to deal with everything that comes with that, including personal problems, internal and external dramas, then this book is for you, as well.
Full disclosure: I played high school basketball back in the day. I'm also a basketball fan, so when I read books that deal with basketball, I can tell if an author knows her stuff or not and PV Beck Knows. Her. Stuff.
Full disclosure two: I am also a Bedazzled Ink author, though on a completely different imprint. But because I am a basketball fan and because I have a sympathy of sorts for high school players, I read "Sweet Turnaround J" because I'm always looking for YA titles that feature young women for my friends with female teens and tweens in the house, and I'll definitely be recommending this one. But I gotta tell you. I think guys would like it, too. Just sayin'.
Now, for the mechanics: Beck writes a tight, well-paced narrative with snappy, true-to-life dialogue, fully realized characters, and the angst that comes with the pressures of being an underdog team in an overdog world.
Janey Holmes is ready for fall, and she's psyched to go to State with her team at her high school, University Lab. However, after spending a summer in California with her dad, she returns to find out her high school was closed in the interim and she's being funneled to the new magnet school, Riverside. Which means she won't be playing ball with the teammates she grew up with and that she'll have to find her groove with a whole bunch of new people.
Her new teammates come from a variety of ethnic and class backgrounds, and initially, the team struggles to find common ground and a sense of purpose. Using basketball as the common language, Beck skillfully maneuvers her readers through the minefields of identity, family drama, and the fouls high school can deal out, like refs do in a big game. From the first meetings of players to the games they play together, Beck pulls the reader right into the practices, right into the locker room and right into the games. This reader felt like she was in the bleachers watching the games unfold, and then when Coach Berro called a time out, I was right there in the huddle as she adjusted plays and players.
Beck also brings to life a diverse group of characters, flaws and all. Janey struggles with the deteriorating relationship of her parents, finding relief of a sort in basketball, though she has to face some of her bad habits head-on in order to be a more effective player. Alejo (Alex to her team mates) comes from a poor Latino family, and has her own struggles trying to complete assignments without a computer. Other players have their own personal issues that they bring to the court, and some of those threaten to derail the team, including a crush between two team mates and the ensuing drama that it brings.
This is a book about basketball the game, yes, but it's also about basketball the culture, and how it can both pull people together and drive wedges between them. It's about how high school girls on the cusp of womanhood deal with responsibility, competition, heartache, growing up, personal problems, school struggles, and finding common ground with people they might never have thought they could.
For those of us who survived high school and a high school sport, this book brought all of that right back. I recognized myself in these characters, in the flaws, the friendships, the alienation, the secrets of the home life that you never showed at school but your best friend knew about, and the sense of being at odds with most adults and many of your fellow students. Beck captures that, and she also captures that sense of coming together, of finding the friends who do have your back, and finding the adults who do, as well.
For those of you who are still in high school, Beck remembers that, and she knows how you feel. You'll see yourself or your friends (or that skanky chick in English class) in these characters.
Parents, if you have girls/young women in your household, encourage them to read this book (and their brothers, too!). It's well-written (Beck has a breezy, approachable style), well-plotted, and laugh-out-loud in places. (and yes, it's devoid of cursing). My one quibble is with the ending, which isn't as strong as this reader would have liked. As it stands, it leaves me, at least, with a sense of "unfinished business," like a ball shot at the buzzer and the power goes out on your TV and you don't know what happens to that shot. However, this is but a small issue, and certainly did not detract from my thorough enjoyment of this book.
Thank you, PV, for bringing my past back in such a delightful way, angst and all. And to young adults/teens/tweens--read this. For real. It's good for you, and in a cool way.
