Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to review an ARC. "We Are the Wildcats" will be released March 31st, 2020.

SUMMARY

Tomorrow, the Wildcat varsity field hockey squad will play the first game of their new season. But at tonight’s team sleepover, the girls are all about forging the bonds of trust, loyalty, and friendship necessary to win.

Everything hinges on the midnight initiation ceremony—a beloved tradition and the only facet of being a Wildcat that the girls control. Until now.

Coach—a handsome former college player revered and feared in equal measure—changes the plan and spins his team on a new adventure. One where they take a rival team’s mascot for a joyride, crash a party in their pajamas, break into the high school for the perfect picture.

But as the girls slip out of their comfort zone, so do some long-held secrets. And just how far they’re willing to go for their team takes them all—especially Coach—by surprise.

A testament to the strength and resilience of modern teenage girls, We Are the Wildcats will have readers cheering.
REVIEW

This was not exactly what it promised it would be. Well, not in all ways, at least. But let's start with the positives. 

THINGS I LIKED ABOUT THIS BOOK 

The field hockey. I know next to nothing about field hockey (I thought it was the same as lacrosse until this book compelled me to Google it and find out that, no, they're two entirely different sports), so it could be inaccurate as all get-out and I'd have no idea. But the way Vivian writes field hockey makes it obvious (seemingly so, at least) that she knows what she's talking about. The descriptions of drills, tryouts, and gameplay were all impeccably-done. 
The friendships. No matter how toxic (and I cannot stress the "toxic" part enough) their surroundings are, the West Essex field hockey girls are unabashedly and wholeheartedly supportive of each other. Their friendship and camaraderie are exactly the kind I like to see in books about teenage girls. The Wildcats really do love each other, and I loved the way the older, more experienced players go out of their way to bring newcomers to the varsity squad into the fold. (And that such friendships could form in a problematic training environment is not that far-fetched. When I was a figure skater, my rink was essentially dominated by a verbally-abusive coach, but us skaters all became extremely close in spite of that. When the powers that be are against young athletes, even if they don't realize what's happening, they ally with each other.) I've only read one of Siobhan Vivian's other books - "Stay Sweet," which I was pretty ambivalent on - but two of her books is enough to know that she writes teenage-girl camaraderie extremely well.
 WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE ABOUT THIS BOOK 

So, let's talk about the coach. 

Obviously, it's stated explicitly in the summary that this dude is going to be a massive jerk. That much is clear. And to be fair, he is portrayed as such, and we absolutely do not for a second sympathize with him. That's good. But. 

It also makes it grind-your-teeth irritating when the girls can't see what the problem with that is, even when all manner of incidents make it clear that they're being abused. SPOILERS Of the six main girls, one was physically harmed by the coach; another was the subject of racist harassment at a game and told to, basically "deal with it"; a third was made to lie to her teammates and act as a spy for their coach; the fourth was encouraged to play through a severe ACL injury, needed multiple surgeries, and was blamed for it by the coach even though she told him she couldn't keep playing and was forced to; the fifth was harassed by the coach for dying her hair; and the sixth had an extremely inappropriate, borderline-romantic relationship with said coach that existed only as an excuse to manipulate her emotionally. END SPOILERS I know it can be hard to see that you're being manipulated; for one of the girls, I can understand why she never saw the issue with her treatment. But all five of the others clearly stated at some point that they were uneasy with the way their coach was treating them and yet didn't tell each other about their suspicions; I was waiting for them to do that, but it took until the last twenty pages of a 368-page book for the girls to even casually tell each other, "hey, I think our coach is a major [redacted]." Is there a reason it was difficult for them to come forward? Of course. But did it have to wait until the LAST 10% OF THE BOOK? No, it didn't. And that delay left me feeling like the story's vaunted "teenage girls outplay coach" premise was a small subplot, if anything, in a book that honestly had no real plot. 

While I enjoyed "We Are the Wildcats," it lacked the post-read satisfaction factor I was expecting. 

ENDNOTES

One-Sentence Summary: not-as-satisfying-as-it's-cracked-up-to-be-but-still-pretty-decent sports story meets Lifetime movie. 

Favorite Scene: the big-reveal scene at the end where all of the girls reveal how they've been hurt by their coach. As much as I hated the pacing of it, there was something undeniably powerful about the way each girl reacted to the other's stories. Also, anything with Ali and Grace, because I loved them together. 

Something that Stood Out: the fantastic friendship dynamics and focus on field hockey.

Something that Bugged Me: the fact that not ONE girl made so much as a suspicious-sounding comment about what she'd been through until the big reveal at the end. I get the "it's hard to come forward" part, but the way it all came to light was a little too neat and a little too planned to be fully realistic. Wouldn't one of the girls had mentioned something in passing that raised eyebrows?

Adult Content: more uses of the f-word than I have ever seen in a single YA novel, plus the aforementioned coach abuse. (It's not violent or sexual but could still be very disturbing to anyone who's been in an emotionally or verbally-abusive situation.) 

Rating: 4/5 Befuddled Emu

Reading this novel from my perspective as an adult and a coach, I recognized what a terrible example of each that Coach was from the jump. However, watching the girls come to this conclusion is rewarding. I loved how Vivian chose to use several different POV characters here in order to showcase the vast differences felt by each character depending on her role on the team. I think anyone who has been pushed to the edge - or over it - in pursuit of athletic success would get into this book.