Swim Recruit by Jennifer Lane

I had this really short novella on my list for a long time. I wasn't sure about reading it since I'm not really into Young Adult. I have my problems with the immature behavior of teenagers.. I just don't have the patience for it. Here I had other problems actually.. mostly that half of the story was "swim talk" I didn't understand AT ALL. While I enjoy swimming I don't know anything about swimming as a sport so all the things mentioned here were just words and words that might helped Abby, a recruit for a swimming team, make her small talk and get to know people around her, but for me it meant nothing..


Then Reese comes into the picture. This sweet huge swimmer with the heart of gold that naturally mostly makes people laugh at and it doesn't help that he discouraged someone from being on the team "earning" him being suspended from the team. Actually there's quite an interesting reason for the way he acted, though in a way it didn't make any sense (he was just behaving as he did because he was pissed at his teammates not because he was REALLY trying to do a solid one for the new guy, well, that's my opinion anyway..).

Abby has a thing about eavesdropping and minding things that are non of her business as it seems.. this is how she find out Reese's reasons. They she "saves the day" by confronting the captain of the team. That was a total WTF moment there. I've been to high school, I remember how it is.. what Abby did might be nice, but in the real world she would just be considered an outsider from that moment on (by Reese's side though) and the bullies would have kept their happy teasing. Yeah, THAT'S real life. THIS was totally UNBELIEVABLE. Douche bags aren't called that for no reason...

One last thing, this novella deals somewhat with homophobia. I guess it's a nice idea to deal with such an important issue in a novella suited for teenagers but I didn't enjoy the whole way the plot went down. I wish life would have been so simple but life and personal experience showed me - it doesn't..

Additional Details: Kindle Ebook, 41 pages, 28 December 2014 / On GoodReads