Leap
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Natalie’s passion is dance, and she’s looking forward to a summer of perfecting her technique at dance camp. Plus, she’s just turned fifteen – a momentous age that means she’s now officially a grown-up. But while her mom doesn’t seem to have got the memo, Kevin, her best friend Sasha’s older brother, has. Caught up with the excitement of Kevin’s attention, their relationship quickly becomes intimate and all-consuming. Over the summer, Natalie goes from being in love and lust with Kevin to realizing that he is not the guy she thought he was. The worst is that she may have lost her friendship with Sasha. When Natalie turns to her single mom for advice, she gets a shock. Her mom has fallen in love with a woman.
Losing her virginity, dealing with her new understanding of her mother, and trying to re-negotiate her friendships, Natalie turns to dancing as the only certain thing in a life full of questions. When a new teacher introduces her to modern dance, she gains confidence and a new sense of herself.
Girls will be drawn to Leap’s frank discussion of first love, first times – sex, drinking, break-ups – and the struggle between doing what feels right and doing things to please others.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kevin is off-limits to 15-year-old Natalie, who documents her coming-of-age summer in notebook entries. Not only is he the older brother of her best friend, Sasha, he's also 19. But Kevin's advances are hard to ignore, and before long the two are having sex. Ostracized by Sasha and her other friends, worried about pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, and jolted by her mother's romance with a woman, Natalie finds solace in modern dance and the guidance of an encouraging instructor. When Kevin proves to be less than gentlemanly, Natalie walks away from the relationship and conjures the strength to call out her neglectful, long-absent father. Lundgren's (Touched) prose can be clunky at times, but Natalie persuasively develops from na ve and resentful after Kevin spurns her to hypercritical about others' transgressions (like Sasha's shoplifting and smoking) and, finally, to poised. In the end, Natalie declares her support for her mother's relationship, befriends a shy girl with dance aspirations, and pauses to contemplate a drug legalization rally a passage that underscores Natalie's growing awareness that the world exists in shades of gray. Ages 13 18.
