Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
I love reading children's/middle grade stories even though I am not the target audience for the story. It's interesting for me to see how stories have changed and grown since I was younger, and they really have for the better. Stories like this weren't present in my childhood and if they were around they were not advertised or well known, like I believe this book is.
The little saying on the cover says it all
Winning is harder than it looks
So true. Not everything is a happily ever after and that's not something I fully learned and understood until I was 19, so for that to be printed on the cover of a novel meant for a juvenile audience really impresses me.
This book covered a lot of important ground. Your friends are allowed to change as you continue to grow up. Don't tolerate mean boys (or girls for that matter). You're beautiful in your own skin, no matter what you look like, working hard doesn't always mean winning but that's okay, jealousy can be toxic but you can recover.
Our main character Maxine has to learn all of these lessons throughout the course of this book and the author writes it tastefully. I love that these things were covered in this book, like I said I'm very impressed, because I think these are crucial things for young people to know. Maxine has to realize that childhood friends don't always last forever because they change and so do you. She has to deal with mean boys and them making racist comments about how she looks, and her response is appropriate for someone her age, but she later figures out that she doesn't need any eye tape to be beautiful because she is already. She also learns how to use makeup to enhance the beauty she already has, which I love because I feel like she is the age where I first got into using makeup. The next thing is something I personally understand on such a deep level: working hard doesn't always mean winning. This is probably my favorite lesson in the whole book because this is still something I'm struggling to grasp as a 22 year old, so portraying that in a book like this could help speed up the process of realization for younger people as they grow up. Maxine works hard, while she is dealing with all the other aspects that come with growing up, and she is successful, but her dream is still out of her reach; however, it's not fully out of range if she keeps working and growing up and learning. I love Maxine's friendship with Hollie. It starts off exactly how I imagine many friendships start off in childhood (some of mine included). Maxine is jealous of how amazing Hollie is at skating and is scared that because of Hollie's talent she won't qualify in her next competition. And despite Maxine's toxic jealous behavior, she realizes her mistakes and after some apologies, her and Hollie become friends and relate to each others skating and personal life struggles. This kind of friendship is important to have as you grow up and I like that the author included it.
Also random side note: the author got into skating because of the movie Ice Princess and omg that is the best thing ever!
Overall, I really liked this book! I rate most books of this kind three stars not because they are bad but because they are not targeted at me and I get what I can out of them.
