Hannah OrensteinHead Over Heels: A Novel

If you love simple love stories and round around humour you will like it. Also as we missed the Olympic’s this year, we get a glimpse of hardcore workouts a gymnast goes through to compete in. A refreshing story of a gymnast who finds her path.

I bought this book because it was in the genre I like and it was cheap. It was a good buy! It kept my interest and kept me coming back as I wanted to know what happened.

I'll start by saying that I bought this book because it's a July selection for Book of the Month. It wasn't my top choice, but the preview was interesting enough that I thought it would be worth buying. I am not interested in most sports, but I have loved women's gymnastics ever since the 1996 Olympics. I follow collegiate gymnastics and women's gymnastics is my favorite competition of the summer Olympics. It is one of the minor tragedies of the global pandemic that we're not getting to enjoy the Olympics this summer. This book in a very tiny way filled a little bit of that void for me.That being said, this book would probably not have held my interest if I were not interested in gymnastics. It's a good book, but it's pretty straightforward. There's no intricate plot here or major twists to be found. The characters themselves are not overly complex, either, but it's such a light read does it really matter? The book does deal with some current issues such as abuse of young female athletes and the #MeToo movement, but it neither adds much to the plot or contributes anything new to the real-life conversation.Still, I enjoyed this book for what it was. It's light and fluffy and exactly what I needed right now in a book. It only took me a couple of days to read it and I don't regret the time spent! If, like me, you enjoy gymnastics and/or watching the summer Olympics, you will probably enjoy Head Over Heels.

Hard to know how to rate this. The book itself was decent and fairly well written however I really didn’t care about the romance. The novel is way more focused on the protagonist and her self image and her relationship with the young athlete she trains. In comparison the romance feels like an after thought. Also whilst I thought the story was well constructed I struggle to forgive the love interest for the way he behaved.So overall a good read but not a couple I care about, it is also way more drama/character driven than romance/humour driven.

Absolutely perfect beach read! This was incredibly fun to read, I had to finish it in just one day.Excellent character development, Avery felt so real and believable in her struggles and how she grew.I’d say the author was well researched, but no need to research as it’s clear her passion for the sport shone through. The level of subject matter expertise for the sport was present, though it was written in a way that I could still understand the technical terms so I can paint a picture of the gymnastics in my mind.Overall, such a fun book that allowed me to escape our reality of 2020 and go to a more fun place.

A great read, relatively light but with some depth and challenging issues. A wonderful insight into the world of gymnastics with a lovely romance woven in!