Takedown

April 15, 2024
A teenage wrestler battles outsized opponents in all aspects of her life. Rowan, a Canadian high school wrestler, is feeling helpless and pulled in multiple directions: Her father is suffering from ALS, she's training for a major tournament in New York City that will attract college recruiters, and her influencer best friend, Pia, her usual sparring partner, is injured. Complicating things even further, she's caught between two very different boys--Ozzy, her high school boyfriend who's a budding Shakespearean actor with two dads, and Caspian, an up-and-coming mixed martial arts fighter with a complicated past. After Rowan stumbles upon a new ALS treatment available only in Sweden, she desperately seeks opportunities to make some fast cash, even if that means participating in an illegal underground fighting ring and possibly jeopardizing her college wrestling career. Sports fans and reluctant readers alike will enjoy the detailed, fast-paced wrestling matches and blow-by-blow MMA fight scenes. While Rowan is a fully realized protagonist, the myriad problems she faces leave little room for in-depth development of most side characters. With so much focus on Rowan's training, love life, and her dad's illness, the wrestling tournament feels almost like an afterthought. Once it arrives, however, the pacing ramps up from steady to fast and furious. Rowan and Caspian read white; Pia is coded Indian Canadian, and Ozzy is "half Lebanese." Visceral and violent yet ultimately hopeful. (Fiction. 14-18)

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 15, 2024
Grades 9-12 Jump into an underground fight club in the latest from Bryan (The Hill, 2021). Rowan is a high-school wrestler and the best in her division. However, she is not the only one fighting a battle; Rowan is watching her father lose the fight against ALS. Frustrated at being unable to help her father, Rowan begins to get into fights and struggles to cope in high school, at wrestling practice, and when preparing for her upcoming tournament, all of which jeopardizes a potential college scholarship. With all this on her mind, Rowan finds a new way to channel her anger and frustration: MMA. However, when there is an opportunity for Rowan to join an illegal underground fighting ring to win money to cover her father's medical treatment, will Rowan take that step into the ring? In Takedown, Bryan tells the story of a rising high-school athlete struggling to balance her love of her sport and her family's struggles in a novel exploring responsibility, coming of age, sportsmanship, and mental health.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.