This YA book covers a wide array of teenage experiences and could lead to some very valuable discussions among high school students about relationships and emotions involved in intimate relations. In this novel there are broken homes, teenagers trying to decide who they want to be while also dealing with teenage friendship rivalries, broken homes; parents are getting remarried, starting new families that make the "original family's children" feel like outsiders, or children trying to deal with their own lives while their parents struggle with substance abuse.
I liked the first-person narration by Jo, Josephine, who feels so adrift with the death of her father during her pre-teen years that she freely throws herself into brief, dead-end high school romances. With each fling, her sense of worth suffers. While Jo hopes for love, the teenage boys laugh about practicing their love making techniques. Yes, she is the practice referred to in the title. Jo has been so involved with athletics, both as a team member, a team manager, and the daughter of the former,beloved wrestling coach that her relationships with girls her own age have suffered. One strong point of this novel is its lesson that human relationships are an important support system, and some of the most important relationships may not be romantic at all. A Black high school girl named Amber tries to rally Jo to find inner strength by reversing the male dominance position and telling Jo at one point that she needs to think that "[the boys] are the ones who are practice." No one in this book is perfect, and when Jo allows her step-dad to talk to her one morning, she learns that "Every person has something they are working on."
I liked the first-person narration by Jo, Josephine, who feels so adrift with the death of her father during her pre-teen years that she freely throws herself into brief, dead-end high school romances. With each fling, her sense of worth suffers. While Jo hopes for love, the teenage boys laugh about practicing their love making techniques. Yes, she is the practice referred to in the title. Jo has been so involved with athletics, both as a team member, a team manager, and the daughter of the former,beloved wrestling coach that her relationships with girls her own age have suffered. One strong point of this novel is its lesson that human relationships are an important support system, and some of the most important relationships may not be romantic at all. A Black high school girl named Amber tries to rally Jo to find inner strength by reversing the male dominance position and telling Jo at one point that she needs to think that "[the boys] are the ones who are practice." No one in this book is perfect, and when Jo allows her step-dad to talk to her one morning, she learns that "Every person has something they are working on."