Dangerous Play

June 14, 2021
It’s Zoe Alamandar’s junior year, and she’s hoping that the players she and her cocaptain Ava recruited over the summer will finally take their Syracuse high school’s field hockey team to States. The season starts promisingly, but after Zoe, who cues as white, is sexually assaulted, she loses her focus. Feeling helpless and angry, she and her intersectionally diverse teammates, many of whom are also survivors, use their athletic skills to fight back, sneaking into parties to attack and scare off any boy who attempts to assault a girl. When things go too far, though, and the team’s sisterhood begins to strain, Zoe must decide if this tack is the right path to recovery. Debut author Kress nimbly alternates between heart-pounding field hockey scenes and social commentary, acknowledging, unlike many books about rape culture, that classism and racism intersect with and compound misogyny. If the narrative sometimes comes uncomfortably close to equating the girls’ vigilantism with their attackers’ sexual violence, it also renders Zoe’s trauma unflinchingly and compassionately, making this a worthwhile look at sexism and the healing power of speaking out—as well as a passionate love letter to an underappreciated sport. Ages 14–up. Agent: Roseanne Wells, Jennifer De Chiara Literary.

February 1, 2022

Gr 9 Up-Junior Zoe Alamandar is captain of the field hockey team with one goal: to get to the New York State Championship, where she can get scouted and obtain a college scholarship to play on a top-ranked team. However, the teen's plan is derailed when she and other teammates are sexually assaulted by other athletes at school. Her reaction is visceral. Zoe and her teammates take the matter into their own hands and become vigilantes for the cause, attempting to stop other girls from being assaulted by the same group of boys. The author has drawn a parallel between the passion in the games and the fierceness the girls have to protect others. The imagery used to describe the games is competitive and exciting. However, once the girls take their plan too far, it feels like revenge, which may not be the intended message. The author has carefully made sure not to make all high school boys villains and all high school girls victims as she depicts male characters in positive and negative light. If a character is sketchy at best, narrator Rachel Jacobs captures it in her voice making the reader dislike the character, too. Jacobs vacillates easily between characters and illustrates fear, power, and frustration. The girls depicted in the novel seem to cross a variety of ethnic groups according to the cover of the book. VERDICT Recommended. The perfect book to read alongside Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak.-Karen Alexander

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