This, along with most of the dudes being awful shitheads anyway, leads to them treating Mara as shittily (I insist that’s a word) as they do the other girls. Two other girls from school, River and Tayley also join the team (and they are delightful!)īut when she sees that the coach won’t even teach the new girls how to play or what certain maneuvers are, she takes matters into her own hands. Mara’s crush, Valentina, also joins the team which throws her for a loop. To her, these girls are not doing it for the right reasons, especially Carly who is clearly just joining to make a statement. She joined the team because she’s good at it, because it’s what she likes. While stewing over how to get back on the team, Mara throws out the idea of joining the football team to her best friend, Quinn, and when he claims it to be “genius,” she decides to go for it.Īt first, the other guys on the team are not enthused with playing with a girl, but as they see her skills and her ability to “hang” with the guys, they come to accept her.Įverything changes when four girls, inspired by Mara’s action, decide to join the team too. Mara…has some anger lol.īut if she never got kicked off of the basketball team, this story wouldn’t have gotten very far. She punched one of her teammates, Carly, for telling their coach Mara might have a concussion and needed to sit out. Mara just got kicked off the basketball team and she is PISSED. What results is a coming-of-age story that is at once tear-jerking and funny, thought-provoking and real, as Mara’s preconceived notions about gender, sports, sexuality, and friendship are turned upside down.

Complicating matters is the fact that Valentina, Mara’s crush, is one of the new players, as is Carly, Mara’s nemesis-the girl Mara fought with when she was kicked off the basketball team. Now Mara’s lumped in as one of the girls-one of the girls who can’t throw, can’t kick, and doesn’t know a fullback from a linebacker. Inspired by what they see as Mara’s political statement, four other girls join the team. But joining the team sets off a chain of events in her small Oregon town-and within her family-that she never could have predicted.

A lifelong football fan, Mara decides to hit the gridiron with her brother, Noah, and best friend, Quinn-and she turns out to be a natural.

FUCK YES.Īfter getting kicked off the basketball team for a fight that was absolutely totally not her fault (okay maybe a little her fault), Mara is dying to find a new sport to play to prove to her coach that she can be a team player. Finding your people, dealing with internalized misogyny, and discovering love where you never expected it. I don’t know what I was expecting from this book, but what I got was so goooood. Sports books AKA books where sports happen usually aren’t my thing, but if they’re like Like Other Girls by Britta Lundin, then I will read ALL of them.