Adrenaline Crush
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Seventeen-year-old Dyna comes from a long line of risk-takers and is an avid thrill-seeker in her own right, until she takes a terrible fall and shatters her leg. Her life used to be about bike racing and rock climbing; now it's about staying home, except for attending physical and group therapy sessions at the bizarre alternative healing center her mom has chosen. Dyna's boyfriend saw her accident and supports her newfound desire for safety, but a young Iraq war veteran she meets at rehab challenges her to think about what she's really avoiding in her old life and to take chances again—even with her heart.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a novel about taking risks, Crompton (The Real Proms Queens of Westfield High) follows a teen's emotional journey as she strives to regain the courage she's lost after a traumatic accident. Whether 17-year-old Dyna is biking, rock-climbing or swimming at the local quarry, she has the reputation of being a daredevil until a near-fatal fall leaves her with a shattered ankle and terror of getting hurt. Now Dyna clings to things that are safe, including an easy relationship with the protective boy who saved her life (whom she initially describes as "Mr. Serious-bordering-on-lame"). The last thing Dyna wants to do is enter the intense therapeutic program that her mother insists she attend, but it is there, interacting with other scarred victims, that Dyna begins to confront her fears. Dyna's changing sensibility, frustrations, and renewed self-awareness are believable, but situations, themes, and the cast of unconventional characters (particularly Dyna's liberal-minded tattoo-artist father) are a bit too self-consciously drawn. Readers are left with a mixed message about the lengths a person should go to feel a thrill. Ages 12 up.
