Ellen just graduated from High school and has her whole summer ahead of her. One of her best friends gets her to try out quidditch in the park. After some trouble at home quidditch is her only outlet.
I loved this book I really felt connected to Ellen I understand what its like to feel uncomfortable in your own skin and misreading situations. This is a great book for people who love quidditch and are just a little awkward.

This is a retelling of Cinderella! A high school graduate joins a local Quidditch league and finds the place where she belongs. Ellen has the perfect summer planned out until her nefarious step-mom grounds her. When her friends convince her parents to let her join the Quidditch team, Ellen is in for a surprise. It's not what she imagined it to be and she's training with other Harry Potter fans. Disclaimer: I got this book from @NetGalley and it's adorable.

This Is How We Fly is contemporary YA fiction focusing on a graduating high school senior, Ellen, as she navigates the summer before college. The description by the publisher that this is a coming of age story and a Cinderella story is fairly accurate.

It does seem like there is a lot of "drama" in this book. There is drama between Ellen and her friends. There is drama between Ellen and her family. There is drama among the Quidditch team members. So, if you like drama, this is a book for you.

Ellen is also wound really tight when it comes to issues. She cares so passionately about everything--feminism, gender-issues, the white misogynist patriarchy, the environment, veganism, etc.--that it causes her a lot of stress when other people do not value these issues at the same level she does.

The dialogue flowed naturally and the Quidditch element was a fun component, but this isn't a particularly fast-moving book and the drama issues did start to feel exhausting and tedious after a while.

Overall, I think this is a book that would appeal to some high-school upper class-men because the themes, the passion around causes, and the relationship issues will feel quite familiar and relatable to them.

Review of an Advance Digital Copy

With everything going on in the Harry Potter world recently, this is exactly the book I needed!
The Harry Potter fan community is the entire reason that I am still a fan, and this book feels like a love letter from a fan to the community.
Ellen is a wonderful character that takes us through all the traditional coming-of-age struggles like worrying about college, fear of growing apart from close friends and navigating new friendships and relationships. What's wonderful about this book though is that it doesn't stop there, Ellen also questions her gender, struggles with her cultural identity and family background, and has a lot of conflicts trying to be a vegan/feminist/environmentalist with parents who just want her to be "normal". I was honestly shocked in the best possible way by how inclusive and diverse this book is, in particular, this is the first time I've ever seen a character with Xe/Xyr pronouns in a book and it made me so happy to see something connected to Harry Potter be so inclusive of many different gender identities!
Also. QUIDDITCH. I've wanted to play Muggle Quidditch for years and this book made me even sadder that there is no local team for me to join, I am not an athletic person and I do not like to try to be athletic but WOW Quidditch sounds like a really good time. I've learned a lot about it over the years and this book had such wonderful scenes depicting the gameplay that I felt like a part of it, I honestly can not recommend this book enough to anyone who has ever felt or wanted to feel supported by the Harry Potter community.