Her body has failed her. All Samantha has ever wanted to do is ballet. Now, on the cusp of entering the grueling professional arena, her body has changed and started developing curves. She's tried everything but the anxiety is crippling her. Her mother enrolls her at Perform at Your Peak, a summer treatment facility for teenaged artists and athletes struggling with anxiety. Can Sam learn to cope or will her anxiety undermine everything?

Books like HOW IT FEELS TO FLY usually fall into a love or hate category for me. I cringe when someone is embarrassed in a novel and too many incidents like that will easily send a book into the hate category for me. Thankfully, Kathryn Holmes avoids those pitfalls. We see inside Sam's world and mindset so well that even her embarrassing moments become uplifting as we see her struggles and determination to overcome.

HOW IT FEELS TO FLY is not a romance despite the fact that the blurb hints at it. In fact, I respect Kathryn Holmes far more for not taking the easy road with the storyline but instead offering readers a solid dose of realism. In fact, the resolutions of HOW IT FEELS TO FLY are what truly solidified my love for this book.

Kathryn Holmes does a marvelous job at tackling the issue of anxiety in teen performers! Holmes doesn't gloss over the control that anxiety has taken in these teenagers lives. Even better, Perform at Your Peak uses credible therapy techniques as an integral part of the character and plot development of the storyline. HOW IT FEELS TO FLY would be a great book for generating discussion with a youth book group or between parents and their teenagers. HOW IT FEELS TO FLY is easily recommended!

Book Summary

A struggle with body dysmorphia forces one girl to decide if letting go of her insecurity also means turning her back on her dreams.

Sam has always known she’d be a professional dancer—but that was before her body betrayed her, developing unmanageable curves in all the wrong places. Lately, the girl staring back at Sam in the mirror is unrecognizable. Dieting doesn’t work, ignoring the whispers is pointless, and her overbearing mother just makes it worse.

Following a series of crippling anxiety attacks, Sam is sent to a treatment camp for teens struggling with mental and emotional obstacles. Forced to open up to complete strangers, Sam must get through the program if she wants to attend a crucial ballet intensive later in the summer. It seems hopeless until she starts confiding in a camp counselor who sparks a confidence she was sure she’d never feel again. But when she’s faced with disappointing setbacks, will Sam succumb to the insecurity that imprisons her?

This compelling story from Kathryn Holmes examines one girl’s efforts to overcome her worst enemy: herself.