Turning
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
In this raw, searingly honest debut young adult novel, a former aspiring ballerina must confront her past in order to move forward from a devastating fall that leaves her without the use of her legs.
Genie used to fouetté across the stage. Now the only thing she’s turning are the wheels to her wheelchair. Genie was the star pupil at her exclusive New York dance school, with a bright future and endless possibilities before her. Now that the future she’s spent years building toward has been snatched away, she can’t stand to be reminded of it—even if it means isolating herself from her best friends and her mother. The only wish this Genie has is to be left alone.
But then she meets Kyle, who also has a “used to be.” Kyle used to tumble and flip on a gymnastics mat, but a traumatic brain injury has sent him to the same physical therapist that Genie sees. With Kyle’s support, along with her best friend’s insistence that Genie’s time at the barre isn’t over yet, Genie starts to see a new path—one where she doesn’t have to be alone and she finally has the strength to heal from the past.
But healing also means confronting. Confronting the booze her mother, a recovering alcoholic, has been hiding under the kitchen sink; the ex-boyfriend who was there the night of the fall and won’t leave her alone; and Genie’s biggest, most terrifying secret: the fact that the accident may not have been so accidental after all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Three months after falling from a roof, teenage Genie, recently featured on the cover of a dance magazine as a promising Black ballerina, is learning to navigate her disability. Paralyzed from the waist down, she sees herself as "the angry Black girl in a wheelchair," and pushes away from relationships with best friend Hannah, a Latinx ballerina who encourages Genie's talent for choreography, and her own mother, who is seven years into sobriety. Genie's especially furious with "very jealous and very needy" ex-boyfriend Nolan, also Black, who is trying to push his way back into her life by threatening to tell Genie's mother about the abortion Genie had before her fall. The protagonist's emotional scars also jeopardize her growing relationship with Kyle, a brown-skinned former gymnast who is relearning to walk and talk following a motorcycle accident. While Genie can come across as one-note, Smith depicts via an unbridled first-person narration her growing proficiency adjusting to her emotional and physical needs, her deep-rooted love of dance, and her recurring disbelief at how swiftly her life changed, while suspensefully revealing the nature of Nolan's role in Genie's fall. Ages 12–up.
