Every Reason We Shouldn’t is a YA ice-skating romance. Fifteen-year-old Olivia is a Japanese American figure skating champion. Or she was, before she blew a big performance last year and washed out of her Olympic dreams. Now she’s adjusting to life as a “normal” teen. She’s back in public school and working at her parents’ ice skating rink, teaching six-year-olds how to skate.
Then Jonah Choi shows up, buying private ice time every day to practice his speed skating. Jonah and Olivia immediately hit it off. They share the intense and isolating experiences of child professional athletes and they develop a playful rivalry that pushes them both to train harder.
This was a cute story. It’s a light romance, aimed at younger teens, and the love story is intertwined with Olivia’s struggle with whether she should return to professional skating. The narrative also touches on some tough topics, like the pressure to succeed that child athletes often experience, as well as the difficulty of dealing with a professional career failure at such a young age.
Overall, this was an easy and lighthearted read, but there were a few issues. Lots of YA books struggle with accurately portraying how teenagers talk. Though this one didn’t do an awful job, there were some particularly awkward attempts to capture teen slang. Though they’re not enough to make you put the book down, they might make readers pause to cringe.
One scene in particular is getting a lot of criticism from reviewers, myself included. Olivia’s school experiences a lockdown late in the book. Having chosen this particular high-stress situation to place the characters in, you’d think the story might be trying to make a point. Perhaps it’s going to explore the lasting impact this experience has on our main characters. But no. The lockdown is over as soon as it's begun and it’s never mentioned again. Having such a heavy topic thrown in and then immediately dropped definitely left me feeling a little confused as to why it was used at all.
Lockdown aside, the story as a whole flows pretty well, and it's a sweet little read. If you enjoy YA and ice skating stories, you'll probably like Every Reason We Shouldn't.
Then Jonah Choi shows up, buying private ice time every day to practice his speed skating. Jonah and Olivia immediately hit it off. They share the intense and isolating experiences of child professional athletes and they develop a playful rivalry that pushes them both to train harder.
This was a cute story. It’s a light romance, aimed at younger teens, and the love story is intertwined with Olivia’s struggle with whether she should return to professional skating. The narrative also touches on some tough topics, like the pressure to succeed that child athletes often experience, as well as the difficulty of dealing with a professional career failure at such a young age.
Overall, this was an easy and lighthearted read, but there were a few issues. Lots of YA books struggle with accurately portraying how teenagers talk. Though this one didn’t do an awful job, there were some particularly awkward attempts to capture teen slang. Though they’re not enough to make you put the book down, they might make readers pause to cringe.
One scene in particular is getting a lot of criticism from reviewers, myself included. Olivia’s school experiences a lockdown late in the book. Having chosen this particular high-stress situation to place the characters in, you’d think the story might be trying to make a point. Perhaps it’s going to explore the lasting impact this experience has on our main characters. But no. The lockdown is over as soon as it's begun and it’s never mentioned again. Having such a heavy topic thrown in and then immediately dropped definitely left me feeling a little confused as to why it was used at all.
Lockdown aside, the story as a whole flows pretty well, and it's a sweet little read. If you enjoy YA and ice skating stories, you'll probably like Every Reason We Shouldn't.