Review: Catching Jordan by Miranda Kenneally

Nov 26, 2011 by shanyn

Title: Catching Jordan
Paperback, 288 pages
Author: Miranda Kenneally
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Publication Date: December 1, 2011
Source: Publisher
Buy: Amazon
Add To: Goodreads

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Book Summary from Goodreads.com:
What girl doesn’t want to be surrounded by gorgeous jocks day in and day out? Jordan Woods isn’t just surrounded by hot guys, though – she leads them as the captain and quarterback on her high school football team. They all see her as one of the guys, and that’s just fine. As long as she gets her athletic scholarship to a powerhouse university. But now there’s a new guy in town who threatens her starring position on the team… and has her suddenly wishing to be seen as more than just a teammate.

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Review:
As I read Catching Jordan, I found myself thinking of the TV show Friday Night Lights – because, while they both seem to be largely about football, the real meat of them are the community and relationships that happen in addition to the football. So, basically, that means I loved Catching Jordan (not as much as I love Friday Night Lights but to be fair, it may be impossible to beat that love).

Jordan is the quarterback for her high school team, and is the top quarterback in Tennessee despite being a girl. She dreams of going to Alabama to play for their college team, but starts to get distracted as she deals with Ty (a new hot boy that joins the team and is also a quarterback) and Henry, her long time best friend.

The only thing that irritated me a tiny bit was that Jordan always assumed that colleges viewed her on the same playing field as the men they were recruiting – and assumed that any school that signed her would let her play as quarterback. I’m all for girl power, and loved reading about a girl being great in a mainly male sport, but I feel like she was a little too naive about how big of a deal it would be for a girl to be a starting quarterback at a division I school. I just asked my husband if he knows of any high school girl quarterbacks that had been recruited to a college team and he gave me a solid no – so while there may be an instance of this we are not aware of, it seems more realistic that a girl in Jordan’s position may consider more of how big of a deal it would be and not just assume she’d be a starting quarterback.

I apologize for that little rant :) It really didn’t take much away from my positive experience with the book, so please don’t let that deter you. Jordan’s relationships with her dad and best friend and teammates are much more important and what I enjoyed reading about the most.

The football topic may deter some readers, but there are only a few terms that are strictly football that may confuse someone not familiar with the topic. And the book isn’t spent in the midst of football games – like I said, it really is more about Jordan’s life with football as the main thread.

Excellent contemporary – I was not disappointed. I have been looking forward to reading this one for months and am so glad I liked it so much :)

Buy: Amazon

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