Published 2023 via Joanne Crymble Publishing LLC
★★★
This is a quick gymnastics read for the middle grade crowd, and if I'm honest I wasn't expecting all too much. But The Gymnast was a pleasant surprise: in it, Riley—a talented gymnast—has to switch gyms when a change in circumstances means that her parents can no longer pay her gym fees. The new gym is an adjustment, to say the least. But...what I like best is that Riley ends up focusing just as much on Nia, a younger gymnast whose parents struggle even more financially than Riley's, as she does on her own gym circumstances.
A lot of the conflict does come from a "mean girl" plot, which I'm never thrilled about—it's a popular plotline for a reason, but I think it's overdone. The mean girl is afforded some complexity, but the other "bad" character is not, and I'd just much rather see fully realized characters with the good and the bad worked in. I'd also have liked to see more of Riley's teammates, old and new; there's a minor plotline involving the new teammates, but they just don't have enough time to get fleshed out.
With all that in mind—a solid read. I will not be reading the next book in the series (because it is about golf), but I can see this one at least being a very good fit for tweenagers or thereabouts.
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