DOUBLE NEGATIVE

A talented student athlete learns that there’s more to life than the swim team when an injury sidelines her in Marshall’s YA novel.

Reece Denning counted on getting an athletic scholarship to an Ivy League college (“There was no Plan B”), but a shoulder injury forces her to leave her elite sports academy and attend a new school while she recovers. There, her goofball (“Spontaneity, it’s the way to go”) but determined older brother, Jamie, runs for student council president and provides comic relief. After his VP selection is disqualified, Reece becomes his reluctant running mate. Due to a preposterous campaign promise of free ice cream, Jamie and Reece are victorious. However, to keep her brother’s college plans moving forward, Reece must play ant to his grasshopper and keep him on task. The counterpoint to Jamie’s fecklessness and Reece’s singled-minded focus is Zain, a student council member who coerces Jamie into writing a student-council constitution, and Reece ends up helping. She meets Zain, and they began a touch-and-go relationship that’s deeper than puppy love but complicated by the fact that an accident required the amputation of one of Zain’s legs, for which he wears a prosthetic; although he’s captain of the basketball team, he knows that he’ll never get an athletic scholarship, but he plans on pursuing a law career. He’s aware of the law’s limitations, however, noting the “crappy settlement” he received for his accident, which, for Reece, strikes close to home. Reece narrates Marshall’s energetic novel with none of the breathlessness and chattiness that one often finds in books for and about teens, and the strong characterizations make the main players’ behavior realistic; for instance, Reece, despite her staunch athleticism, attends a few alcohol-fueled parties as she gets acclimated to her new surroundings, as many teens would. The action and exposition come at a fast clip, but not so quickly as to overwhelm and confuse readers, and although the constitution subplot feels like a bit of a run-around, the author does smoothly integrate it into the plot. In the end, the protagonist comes to an important realization—that, in life, “Perfection was overrated.”

An often humorous and insightful story of teens becoming self-aware young adults.