Freefall Summer

by Tracy Barrett

[readingwithwrin]

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an e-arc in exchange for my honest review.

"What I really wanted was to see what it felt like to not always be a good girl, to do something that would upset my dad if he knew about it."


Clancy works at her dad's skydiving business packing up the parachutes while she saves for college. A lot of the book happens at her dads business and is around skydiving in general. Her best friend Jules is also around a lot but doesn't always give the best advice when it comes to relationships. She also has a boyfriend who gets along great with her dad but doesn't always ask her opinion on things before asking about them. (This bugged me so much.) Then we also have Denny who is a skydiving student who Clancy becomes friends with.

Okay, so let's get to the not so great parts of the book first:

The communication between Clancy and her dad, not the best, but realistic in my opinion. For a change, a parent was involved, but he took helicopter parent to the extreme.
Clancy's boyfriend is rather controlling and it's obvious that they just aren't going to work out long-term.
Clancy's secretiveness and not telling the full truth about certain things that leads to some problems.


Now for the things I did like:

Clancy's friendship with the other people at her work.
Her friendship with Denny, it was really nice and I liked how Clancy really got out of her little bubble that he dad had made for her.
At the beginning of each chapter, there was a rule from the Whuffo's Guide to Skydiving which she had been writing since middle school.
How the loss of Clancy's mother was dealt with in a very real way for a lot of people (in my opinion) we avoid the topic in general or just glaze over it and that's what's happened for most of Clancy's life.
I also liked how Clancy mostly stuck to who she was deep down and didn't give into certain pressures.


"What I did know was that when people say your life can change in an instant, that's only half the story. It's not just your life that changes. It's you. You become a whole different person."

Overall I enjoyed most of this book. I read contemporary's for fun and if it has a realistic element to it I'm even more likely to read it. This book deals with three different elements a loss of a parent, an overly involved parent and relationship problems. These were done fairly well and in a realistic way, yet this book was still fun and a rather light read. I also liked learning about skydiving because I really don't know much about it and it kind of scares me and interest me at the same time.
I can't wait to see what Barrett writes next for YA as this one was pretty good.


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