THRILL SEEKERS

Presents a passionate panoply of women in extreme sports.

The women profiled here come from many walks of life and various career paths—but above all, whether professional athletes or not, they are committed to their sports. Each of the book’s five sections focuses on a particular type of sport and contains three profiles of female athletes that generally begin with anecdotal accounts of some pivotal moment in the athlete’s career, pan back to cover her early life and the accrual of successes, and end on a positive note promising further adventures to come. Trivia boxes present facts about each sport and its history. Staats includes pursuits readers may be unfamiliar with or less accustomed to seeing women participate in, such as wingsuit flying, parkour, and cold-water diving. The straightforward but effervescent prose allows the women’s achievements to take center stage, although the introduction and afterword, insistently uplifting and empowering, add little to the overall narrative and read like bland motivational posters. The trivia, on the other hand, does wonders to demystify activities that might be foreign to teen readers. Helpfully, links to the athletes’ social media profiles are included, encouraging community and, importantly, exploration. There is some diversity in ethnicity, nationality, and sexuality among the women profiled.

An engaging, energetic, and unabashedly woman-centric adventure.