Review: "Leave It on the Track" by Margot Fisher

Leave It on the Track by Margot Fisher
Published November 2025 via Dutton Books for Young Readers
★★★★

Moose has grown up skating: the rink is her dads' happy place, and it's hers too. Utah isn't always easy—not everyone is accepting of her dads, and Moose isn't ready to be out herself—but it's home. But when a devastating fire upends her life, she's sent to Portland to live with Eden, the sister she barely knows...and finds a new way to get on the track.

By the time I picked this up, I'd sort of forgotten the details of the setup, and all I remembered was that there was roller derby involved. (I am predictable! If it has roller derby in it, I'll read it!) And man, while I really do recommend forgetting almost everything about a to-read book except that you want to read it—it makes for a more raw reading experience, with more surprises—my heart was immediately torn into little tiny pieces and...well, left on the track. I am not a crier and can count on one hand the number of times I've cried over a book, but Leave It on the Track tested that.

There's a fair amount going on here—grief, survivorship, new home, coming out, new sport, romance. I probably could have done without the last of those, but then, I am a broken record on this subject; I desperately want more books, and especially more YA books, that are about fierce, platonic female friendship. It all works well together, though. Moose's grief is so present; even as the world starts looking a little brighter, she's navigating a whole new landscape and reality. Some parts of it are objectively better than her old life (e.g., casual and visible acceptance of queerness at school), but none of it can make up for the depth of her losses. (If you've faced parental loss, maybe approach this one with caution, in a know-what-you're-up-for kind of way.) And while Moose's eventual derby name fits—my gosh am I disproportionately glad we got to hear "Moose on the Loose" so many times.

Eventually I'd like to see two things in roller derby books: First, I'm looking forward to eventually getting some derby fiction in which the rules don't all have to be explained to the protagonist as a way to explain them to the reader. I get it, of course; most readers will probably have at most a passing understanding of roller derby...just, someday I want this to be to the point where we have more books where the protagonist already knows and loves roller derby, and less time can be spent on learning how it all works. It was interesting to note, though, that there's at least one character in here whose parent did derby at one point in time. I like that it's gotten popular enough (again) to have multiple generations in on it. Second, I don't see enough books featuring blockers. Jammers get a lot of the visibility (they're the only ones who can score points), but there are four times as many blockers as there are jammers on the track, so...proportionally, there should probably be more books featuring blockers. (That said: Judging by Fisher's website, she is or was a jammer herself, so this book gets a pass; these are both more general observations.)

Overall, a very solid addition to the roller derby corpus.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.