Published March 2024 via Feiwel & Friends
★★★★
Bird has always been too much: too big for gymnastics, too different to fit in easily at school. And now, with a move to rural New York, the way forward seems even less certain...until Bird meets someone who offers a new way out: stop trying to fit in. Start taking up space.
As far as wrestling goes, this gets a relatively slow start: wrestling isn't something Bird has even considered when the book opens; the bigger concern is becoming a cheerleader so that Bird has a chance of fitting in and flying under the radar. It's a while before Bird is able to entertain the prospect of giving up her quest to fit in. But when that does happen, somehow even I started getting invested in the wrestling outcomes—never mind that they're all fixed; it's sort of fascinating to think about all the choreography and considerations that go into the outcomes and the storyline.
What I liked best, though: This is not a typical city-girl-struggles-against-small-town-attitudes story. Bird is struggling with suddenly being in a small town, yes, but with parents are as liberal as they come, and as Bird starts to get to know some of the side characters, it becomes clearer that they have more depth, and more willingness to accept new things, than she would have expected. It was nice to not be able to properly predict how things would turn out—I mean, it's YA, so generally things are going to turn out fine, but there were a lot of directions this could have taken, and it is flipping fabulous that none of those directions were romance. Would happily read more from Rourke-Mooney.
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