Every Reason We Shouldn’t is about 15 year old Japanese-American Olivia who is a figure skater but doesn’t skate anymore. She’s trying to be a typical teenager, going to normal school, going to parties but her heart is always on the ice. We meet Jonah who trains at the ice rink that her parents own, whose dreams of being an Olympian are still shining bright.

Every Reason We ShouldntThis YA Contemporary is so refreshing. I loved how not-jaded and simple the storyline was. The story was interesting without being too busy. I loved that it focused on Olivia’s dreams and non-romantic relationships with new friends and her parents. Although some of the backstories felt a little undone. It would have been nice for the background characters to be a bit more fleshed out and “characteristic,” as well as their backgrounds.

I enjoyed this contemporary story focusing on two teens who have Olympic-sized dreams, but life throws each of them different curve balls on the path to making them come true. Olivia is the daughter of gold medalist pairs skaters, and was one-half of a power-house juniors pair that couldn't quite make it in the next age group. Instead of pushing through, she's focused on working at the rink her parents own, largely run by a young single mom since her own mother suffers from crippling pain and her dad is on the road touring. Things get interesting with a young, fellow skater-of-color shows up with the talent and drive to make it in the world of short track speed skating.

This was a fine one-time read for me. A few things that had me struggling to suspend belief especially given that novel falls solidly in the "contemporary, realistic fiction" category were the absentee parents, how healthcare actually works, and the vocabulary/actions/reactions of these apparent 15 year olds. As someone who worked in high schools for 7 years, some of these kids felt a bit Dawson's Creek/Gilmore Girls in how they spoke - If they were 17/18 I could buy it, but 15? Not so much. Good for library collections where contemporary romance is a popular genre.

DNF 26% - This is one of those times when I really feel my age while reading a YA book. The characters just seemed SO young. I found Jonah to be completely obnoxious and couldn’t see why Olivia was drawn to him.

For the first 40% of the book I was reasonably into it. I wanted to see the relationship progress and see where things went. I liked the characters and what they shared and I was interested in seeing the skating theme develop. However, between 50% and 90% of the way through it feels like nothing happens. Then we get a problem introduced at like 95% which gets a rushed solution and I'm not even sure I could really tell you what happened. I found myself skimming through lots as the stakes seemed low and I didn't invest in the characters. Not for me, unfortunately.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this digital arc.
Olivia is part of an Olympic family. Her parents are gold medalists who now own an ice skating rink called Ice Dreams. She's skated professionally but her dreams seem to have ended after a terrible finish. When a speed skater and his dad buy out the rink every day for a few hours of practice, Olivia doesn't know if it's a good or bad thing. Little does she know how much Jonah Choi is going to affect her life.
This book was so much more fun than I expected. I love ice skating books so add in speed skating AND roller derby? This just got so much more interesting! All the characters are flawed but I loved that. While Olivia and Jonah are not normal teens, they felt genuine to me. Olivia is not quite ready to give up on her Olympic dreams even though she knows deep down that she's not the best. Watching Jonah as he practices every day doubles down on those feelings. Within her skating bubble, there's so much detail about the different types of skating that I loved. From the good with Jonah getting better and better and winning competitions to the bad of her mom dealing with horrendous pain from an old skating injury. It's clear that the author did her research of skating. Throwing in roller derby just made it all the more fun.
The budding romance between Olivia and Jonah was wonderful. It felt real and I couldn't help but smile when they skated together and grew closer. Their growing like/love for each other was adorable. You could feel the love coming off the pages.
The supporting characters were so great and really filled out the story. Mack was my absolute favorite and the story would have been lesser without her. The parents of the story have big problems that make you side with the teens when they have their fights. I also liked Olivia's school friends because it took you out of the skating world and into the normal teen world for a bit. I do feel that last 30 pages was rushed and it could have benefited from a few more chapters. There were actual issues that needed to be solved in a more thorough manner than it was. Still, this is a solid YA book that was a lot more entertaining than I expected. Definitely would recommend this book to anyone looking for a YA romance or has a love of all types of ice skating!

This book is everything you would expect a high school love story to be. Does that make it bad? Absolutely NOT! Despite the fact that it was fairly predictable, and some of the jokes were just soo cheesy, I really enjoyed the characters and the love story. I also appreciate the representation. If you love a cheesy, fast paced love story like me, then this is for you!

This cover is adorable and so is the concept: After her Olympic pairs figure skating dreams ended, biracial fifteen-year-old Olivia Kennedy is trying to figure out life as a normal teen when speedskater Jonah Choi zips into her school and rink life and refuels her zest to skate again. Olivia and Jonah are truly perfect for each other, understanding each other's need to push themselves to perfection. Unfortunately, the sweetness of their romance wasn't enough to overcome the need for trigger warning (food issues) and weak conclusion.

With her parents barely paying attention, Olivia is practically a feral teen. She has to beg for rides, there's no food in the house, no one checks if she is home at night, she trains while injured, she flees to another state to compete - it is mind-boggling how many times Olivia places herself in potential jeopardy. I found myself more concerned that Olivia was going to develop an eating disorder or flunk high school than figure a way to train, find a partner and be with Jonah.

Like I said, this book needs a huge trigger warning for eating issues. In addition to Jonah's notorious "carbphobia", Olivia constantly agonizes about her weight as she obsesses over her school lunch choices, scrounges for food at home or scarfs down junk food at the rink. Neither develops an eating disorder but I imagine this could be very triggering for many readers.

I ended up DNFing this one pretty quickly. I didn't click with the characters at all, the main character was someone who was a contradictory and didn't make a ton of sense. She cared about ice skating more than anything, but also stopped training for months simply because of some remarks at a competition. This one just wasn't for me.

Olivia Kennedy has grown up in the shadow of her olympic gold, figure skater parents. They’ve trained and homeschooled Olivia her whole life in the hopes of raising her to be a pairs figure skater with her partner Stuart “Egg” Trout. But after one bad skate, Olivia is scared she’s already a “has-been” at 15. With her parents struggling to keep their ice rink open, the arrival of Jonah Choi, a speed skater destined to make it to the Olympics, the answer in navigating skating and a normal teen life for Olivia might lie within her relationship with Jonah.

The premise of this book is the sort of novel I’ve been dying to read since the 2018 Winter Olympics. The struggle and determination it takes to make it to the Olympics, plus the idea of a romance between skaters is something I know I’d enjoy. And yet, this one lacked a lot for me. At times, I thought Jonah and Olivia’s relationship was going to be “forbidden” in the sense that Jonah would be too busy with training to start anything romantic with Olivia. But then, they got together, and there wasn’t any push back for it. Then, I thought Jonah might help Olivia get over her fears of performing, but that didn’t happen. The plot of the story didn’t revolve around their relationship at all, it was mostly secondary to Olivia’s desire to skate again and her relationship with her parents.

My complaints about this novel is not the lack of romance, but the lack of explanation in the summary. Described as containing “family expectations and romantic tension”, I didn’t think either of those things existed. In fact, Jonah and Olivia’s relationship felt almost anti-climatic. They just… got together.

I feel like I should also mention there is a school lockdown scene–which I would have liked to see a content warning for–that was not handled well, in my opinion. Olivia and Jonah’s fear felt very visceral in the moment, but then was hardly talked about again. The lockdown is used to show the disconnect between Olivia and her mom (who struggled with severe back pain and is largely absent due to her use of painkillers) but I think it’s distasteful to use a scenario like this.

I will say I enjoyed Olivia’s relationship with Mack, a 20 year old who works at the skating rink and is struggling to figure her life out. Mack was a fun character to read about, I enjoyed the scenes with the derby girls and the teenaged shenanigans Mack, Olivia, and Jonah got into.

Overall, I think this book tried to tackle too many things so that it didn’t tackle any of them well. I wanted more of Jonah and Olivia’s relationship. I wanted to see the struggle of Olivia regaining her confidence on the ice again. I wanted to read about more skating!

Every Reason We Shouldn’t by Sara Fujimura is set to release on March 3rd, 2020.

*Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest and thoughtful review.

Content Warnings: School Lockdown

Although this book built the characters well and had great relationships, I'm not a big fan of this book. I loved how it touched upon everything happening in each character's life, and how it covered many issues and struggles. This book didn't grab my interest like I thought it would have. Overall, I don't think it's a bad book, I just think this book wasn't for me.

first time reading about ice skating and this was so cute! despite the fact that all the talk about skating was confusing, i really enjoyed this book.

i really felt for olivia, she just wanted to find her place in this world and for her parents to care. jonah was adorable i loved him.

this book was very... anticlimactic... i honestly just loved the characters.

This was a super fun, YA skating romance. Olivia is a figure skater, Jonah a speed skater. They meet at the ice rink Olivia’s family owns. I have no clue how accurate any of the skating is, but I found the characters likable and relatable.

Olivia thought she had come to terms with the end of her Olympic dreams, but a new fire was lit, when inspiring speed skater, Jonah, began training at her parent's rink. As she attempted to reclaim her place in the skating world, her world outside began to crumble, but would this mark the end of her skating comeback?

• Pro: In this kind of story, I needed to be able to root for someone, and I found myself sort of rooting for EVERYONE! Olivia, Jonah, Mack, mom, dad, the business -- I wanted everyone and everything to succeed, and Fujimura did a nice job cycling me through an array of emotions as I awaited all the individual outcomes.

• Pro: I couldn't imagine going from being at the top of my sport to believing I was washed-up at 15. I easily sympathized with Olivia's adjustment to "normal teen life", but I never stopped hoping she would stop moping and wage her comeback.

• Pro: I adored Jonah. He was so focused on his goals. His discipline was admirable, however, I won't say I was sad, when a certain young woman became both a motivation and distraction for him. This let me see his sweet and swoony side, and it was something I was glad I had the opportunity to get acquainted with.

• Pro: Mack was everything you want and need in a best friend. At first, I saw her as the comic relief, but she was so much more than that, and I was so happy that Fujimara gave Mack her own story arc. Believe me, when I say that the Kennedys struck gold the day this young woman walked into their rink.

• Pro: Olivia was still adjusting to life outside the skating world, and she had little support from her parents, as her father was physically absent, and her mother, emotionally absent. My worry was allayed once I met Mack, Jonah, Egg, and even the lunch bunch were there to give Olivia much needed pushes, hugs, and encouragement.

• Pro: The romance between Jonah and Olivia was so sweet, adorable, and awkward. I shipped them hard from their first standoff, and was so happy with the way it all played out.

Overall: I loved the time I spent at the rink getting to know Olivia, Jonah, and everyone else in their world, and throughly enjoyed their journey as they reached for their dreams.

This is a cute romance book filled with friendship and pursuing your goals. Both Olivia and Jonah are passionate about ice skating. Jonah is a speed skater, renting out Olivia’s family’s rink so he can practice. Olivia is a former figure skater, uncertain if she wants to pick it back up again. This is a very diverse book with neither of the main characters being completely white. The only white main character is a teen mom, which is something you really don’t see in books, and I really liked its inclusion.
However this book fell a little bit short for me. I was confused by the title. With the title “Every Reason We Shouldn’t” I thought there would be more romantic tension and angst because they can’t be together, but everything goes smoothly. The only point of contention is when Jonah is considering going to an olympic training center and when his dad is being really really strict. I was hoping there would be actual reasons why they couldn’t be together (like their families hating each other, cultural differences, different hobbies) but there really aren’t any.
It was still a very heartwarming story of two kids falling in love over a common interest and pursuing their passions. It’s perfect for younger teens and is great as a quick, light-hearted read.

This was an enjoyable read. It is predictable, but this does not make it any less enjoyable. I did feel it dragged in some places, but it is a nice light read.

Thanks to Macmillan-Tor/Forge & @netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The writing was okay, You know when you read a YA book and you know it was made for someone who is actually 16, that was this book. I feel like a lot of YA books are directed towards an 17-18+ age and this one was meant for someone much younger.

The focus of the book was really about competitive skating. Training for it, the mentality needed for it, how it consumes your life, and how it can affect the rest of your life (as in the case of Olivia's mother's debilitating back injury). The parents were also written from a point of view I didnt really enjoy they were either absent, or overly focused on her ice skating.


This one was just okay for me

In all honesty, this probably was never going to be my kind of book. But I thought I'd give it a try anyway since it had the potential to be a cute fluffy romance, and included ice skating which practically invented romance anyway (see exhibit A: Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir). Except that it was really really not great. It only took me a few pages to recognise the fact that the writing was incredibly distracting. I wanted to give it a second chance, so I continued. It felt like the second chapter was written by an entirely different person than the first. Not to mention the fact that the prose itself is just so juvenile. The author is clearly trying their very hardest to sound cool and hip and it's having the opposite effect. Word to the budding novelist - just because Forever 21 might have it on a t-shirt, doesn't mean people actually talk like this in real life. 'OMG' and 'awko-taco' are two words (?) I had to read before I gave up. And it wasn't even a piece of dialogue - it was inner monologue. And it was awful. Anyway, I'm sorry I abandoned this so quickly, but it honestly just isn't worth my time. On to the next one.

Every Reason We Shouldn't is a nicely written YA story that feels very much like the outline for a teen movie. I appreciated that as much attention was given to the pro skating/training as to the romance and that the characters were conflicted in different ways. I also liked that neither main character was your typical white urban teens with clueless parents. Each person had a distinct voice and was working on their own agenda and needs, which was refreshing.

Story: Teenager Olivia's famous figure skating parents own a rink in Phoenix. Olivia herself was a professional skater as well but after a championship went very wrong, she has opted to be an instructor at her mother's rink. But the rink is in financial trouble, her father has to be on the road for most of the year to earn money, and her mother's injury keeps her medicated and at home most of the day. Olivia's consolation is Mac - the older girl who works at the rink with Olivia. To make ends meet, Olivia's mother rents out the rink to an olympic hopeful - a younger speed skater named Jonah. Olivia and Jonah have a lot in common - instantly understanding the world of constantly training on the ice for big competitions and as olympic hopefuls. But with Jonah's helicoptor parents and Olivia's absent ones, the rink may not be able to survive much longer.

Perhaps the best part of the book is the seamless blending of cultures. From Olivia's Japanese background to Jonah's very Korean parents - all within the American milieu of Phoenix. Author Fujimura does an excellent job of bringing in everything from traditional foods to being a bit of an outcast in a nearly all-white school (the Asian-heritaged kids all ended up hanging out together and 'representing' at lunch).

Another bonus was best friend Mac - a bit spikey and conflicted, a single parent dealing with a deadbeat dad, but one of the smartest kids to graduate valedictorian. Her journey from top of the class to scraping gum off the undersides of tables at the rink is poignant. Several other characters were also interesting as well: Olivia's former ice skating partner Egg (Stuart) and his ambivalence was a nice touch.

The focus of the book was really about competitive skating. Training for it, the mentality needed for it, how it consumes your life, and how it can affect the rest of your life (as in the case of Olivia's mother's debilitating back injury). The parents weren't vilified for either a) being too focused on training (as with Jonah's father), or b) the absence of Olivia's father as he toured with an ice skating company in order to help keep the rink going. Olivia's mother issues due to the severe pain and requiring medications was well written.

Points also for the romance, which wasn't a silly tempestuous melodramatic thing but instead something that the two openly acknowledged and pursued in a nicely organic fashion.

In all, a really nice read and something I wish would be turned into a teen move some day. Reviewed from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher.

Alrighty, yet another case of simply not for me. I was in the mood for a cuter, younger romance vibe when I signed up for this read (also, multiculturalism and Olympic skating were big draws) but I just am not in the mood for it. The narrator can be pretty immature and while, yeah, that's teenagers for you, it just was not something I could handle for almost three hundred pages. Highly recommend for funs of cuter, younger romances though!!

Eh.

I'm a bit of a skating media lover (though not an expert by any means!) so I was looking forward to this, but something between the individual elements and the combination of it all didn't altogether work for me. I found Olivia to be a confusing MC: on the one hand fairly average and relatable, dealing with parental issues and falling in love for the first time, but on the other having a pretty big chip on her shoulder based on her perception of herself as a #1 skating star who none of her "normal" friends could possibly understand. This was especially hard to swallow because the narrative was pretty back and forth on how talented and/or devoted Olivia actually is to skating. As she gave her impassioned speeches at the end about the importance of having a rink which focuses on the love of skating, I tried to remember if I ever felt that she had a passion for the sport itself - it seemed like she was more focused on the reputation and winning aspects of it, the cachet of being an Olympian.

(Like I said, not an expert, but it seems to me that there's a certain amount of arrogance to believing yourself Olympic-worthy or even potentially Olympic-worthy after taking a big chunk of time off from practicing your sport much less competing.)

Jonah's through line in relation to his sport was much clearer. I appreciated how Apolo Ohno was mentioned as inspirational to him as it's the kind of thing a fan/participant in a less well-known sport would latch onto (and, also being of mixed Asian heritage, the invocation thereof particularly touched on the importance of having exemplars in your field of interest) and I was grateful that the book didn't try to steer him away from his own path to partner with Olivia (and in fact explicitly called out how unlikely and unhelpful it would be). I wasn't, however, overly impressed with him as a love interest. I guess I found him too realistic in some ways rather than the typical rom-com/YA fluff boyfriends. Coming back from competition and doing a reveal of his medals seemed sort of a self-important teen boy move rather than a cute one, and the way he seemed to appreciate Olivia's understanding regarding his own drive and obligations but was unenthusiastic/dubious/unsupportive of her own talents had me side-eyeing. Also, the fact that Olivia was already gunning for him when he was still saying stuff like "slow carbs are crap" at least once a chapter...to each their own, I guess.

As for the supporting characters, I thought Mack was clearly the standout, someone with her own plotline and issues (honestly, more "not going to college/plan B" YA stories - as college admissions get only more competitive and stress inducing, showing interesting, smart, well-rounded characters whose lives don't end with a Stanford rejection is valuable) but whose loyalty to Olivia was lowkey baffling. Stuart/Egg was also interesting along similar lines. As for the school friends, I felt like they existed more for conflict/contrast than to actually be characters of their own. (And the "his girlfriend, Naomi" thing in the epilogue was...not smooth.)

I know other reviewers felt this way in regards to the lockdown scene, that it was only included for brief drama and wasn't given the long-term emotional weight it deserved. I read the book this afternoon and had forgotten that it even happened by the time I was starting to write this review so take from that what you will.

The ending didn't overly impress me from a realism standpoint, but I suppose that it wasn't really that type of book; a sort of magical fix of a seemingly impossible situation is probably a fairly fitting ending.

Maybe recommend to readers looking for light fiction, and who focus on story rather than character or language.

ETA: I went to look the author up to see if she was a Phoenix native herself (I've never been to the city, and was thinking about the description of the school as fairly lacking in Asian students and wondering if she spoke from personal experience) and found that she describes herself on her website as "the American half of our Japanese-American family." As a white person who is married into a Japanese family, who has biracial/bicultural children, and who spends time in Japan, she's almost certainly more knowledgeable than my single white/Jewish self, and I'm hopeful that the cultural references are accurate, but it seems to me that her not being Asian herself makes her talk of over-bearing Asian parents in particular...a little iffier.