Kelly joins a new gym run by the Olympic coach, but she\u2019s unsure of herself in the shadow of her \u201cbubbly, \/ beautiful, confident\u201d best friend, Jenny. Through Jenny, she meets Brandon, a cute boy she believes she doesn\u2019t have a chance with since she\u2019s \u201c\u2018stocky.\u2019 \/ And sad.\u201d Kelly is devastated over the recent death of her beloved half brother, Michael, while he was camping with Todd, her other half brother. Her household is filled with tension\u2014unkind Todd seems to resent it when Kelly\u2019s grief spills over: \u201cTodd is handsome and \/ charming. \/\/ To other people.\u201d In short lines of unadorned free verse, Kelly speaks about her feelings (including guilt over experiencing happy moments when Michael\u2019s life is over), the gym where she trains, a new gymnastics friend, family dynamics, and her growing involvement with Brandon. Shelton carefully portrays the tough world of competitive sports that Kelly wants to enter. Her fragile emotional state coupled with her drive to get onto the competition team supply this verse novel for striving readers with enough interest to keep the pages turning. Characters largely present white.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kelly joins a new gym run by the Olympic coach, but she\u2019s unsure of herself in the shadow of her \u201cbubbly, \/ beautiful, confident\u201d best friend, Jenny. Through Jenny, she meets Brandon, a cute boy she believes she doesn\u2019t have a chance with since she\u2019s \u201c\u2018stocky.\u2019 \/ And sad.\u201d Kelly is devastated over the recent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7425"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}