Heat
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
A champion diver fights to conquer her fears and get back on the board
Bonnie is doing a reverse 2-and-a-half somersault when her forehead hits the diving board. She sinks into the pool, unconscious, sucking water into her lungs. When her teammates pull her up, they think she’s dead. Bonnie’s coach pumps her chest, breathing air into her lungs until Bonnie’s eyes open, and she can breathe by herself. Her head is bloody, her face a bruised mess. She’s felt pain before, but now there’s something new: For the first time in her life, Bonnie is afraid.
Diving has always helped Bonnie escape the pressures of an unhappy family. But even after she recovers from her concussion, she finds it impossible to get back on the board. When her father is indicted for fraud, she needs the freedom of diving more than ever. But before she can fly, she must learn to leap without fear.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cadnum's latest may not have as much heart-pounding action as some of his previous thrillers (Zero at the Bone; Taking It), but there is plenty of tension. As the story opens, narrator Bonnie Chamberlain, a diver, has just regained consciousness following an accident in the pool at her fancy private school. Bonnie, who has started to entertain dreams about the Olympics, is left with a concussion and serious doubts about future competition. As she fights anxieties about rejoining the team and possibly reinjuring herself, she is hit with a second whammy: her father, a prominent attorney recently remarried to his secretary, is arrested for defrauding clients. While the meshing of two heavyweight traumas is slightly awkward, other aspects of the plot--particularly the change in Bonnie's belief in her father's innocence to her knowledge of his guilt--are compelling. Adopting the laconic style that gives so much of his writing its tough edge and adult flavor, Cadnum challenges readers with hard questions about the nature of fear and of betrayal. Ages 12-up.
