Book Review: Penalty Kick

Book: Penalty Kick by Terence O'Leary

Source: Borrowed from Publisher/NetGalley for an honest review

Publication: Available now

Publisher: Swan Creek Press

Description:

Josh lives for soccer until the day of the accident. Brooke knows what it is like to wake up in a hospital bed with your whole life shattered. Inspired by true events, Penalty Kick is a poignant love story about a teenage girl who tries to help a fifteen-year-old boy overcome devastating loss.



Rating: 2 1/2 stars

Review:

This wasn't bad. Penalty Kick which is mostly written in third point of view. It follows two high school students Josh Connelly and Brooke Avery but also focused a little on Josh's father Alan and sister Jessie. Josh is dealing with the guilt, anger and grief of causing the death of his mother. He had been driving them back home from his soccer game when the accident occurred. Meanwhile, as his father tries to cope with the loss of his wife he soon becomes distant and angry towards Josh.

As for Brooke, she is finally able to enjoy her life again as her cancer seem to have gone into remission. However, after she sees that Josh is spiraling out of control, she takes it upon herself (or more as an obsessional project) to try to help him. She was able to get him to talk to Dr. Robinson, a psychiatrist to help Josh deal with some of his issues.

I found the writing to be stilted at times while in the third POV making it hard to connect with the characters and the story. But when the characters were speaking to each other you get a better sense of who they are. I like that Brooke has such a positive outlook especially after what she's been through. Something that I found interesting was that Josh's nine year old sister Jessie seems to dole out a lot of good wisdom to both her father and brother.

I think it would have been wonderful if there had not been a romance between Josh and Brooke. Reading this you could see how great they were as friends and the romance besides being insta-love felt as if the author tossed it in simply because this is a YA book. You know how refreshing it would have been to have the two main characters just be friends.

The story suffered from too much soccer (well soccer plays) and too much distant and detached third POV writing, if both of those had been kept to a minimum it would have been an even better story.