Unfortunately, I wasn't really able to get into this book but I think that has more to do with me than the book! This is still a great book for teen readers who enjoy sports-related books, and I'll definitely be recommending it at my library.

This one tackled tough topics and it was an interesting perspective on what a girl might do after experiencing it.

<i>Thank you NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.</i>

4.5 stars

This was a powerful novel about sexual assault, victim blaming, and the #MeToo movement. Although it certainly contains some subjects that are difficult to read about, I found myself flying through this book in only a day. The writing was fantastic--it was strong and realistic, while still capture the voice of teens. I appreciated that the characters didn't always do the "right" thing when trying to deal with the injustices they were facing; the fact that their actions were questionable (and sometimes straight up vengeful) was mentioned, yet the characters weren't outwardly punished. I really admired this risk on the author's behalf, as it highlights how muddled the territory of sexual injustice can be, and the deep emotions it produces.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me a free advanced copy of this book to read and review.

I struggled a bit with this one, probably because I'm spending less time reading YA than before. I do appreciate the fairly accurate portrayal of high schools and loved the relationships but felt weird about the violence portion of the novel.

If you are looking for badass women get revenge trope - then Dangerous Play is for you. While parts of this book were difficult to read (CW// sexual assault, harassment, chronic medical condition), the relationships between the girls grew on me.

Part of the book had me frustrated - when the group of girls really go into some vigilante shit - with very, very little consequences. However, I understand this also doubles to highlight how the boys frequently get away with assault and harassment with no consequences.

Overall, I enjoyed this YA book with a big dash of girl power.

So many things were happening at the same time that the characters and plot fell flat, this was too unrealistic

Very interesting sports story about taking revenge on abusers and rapists. Spirals a little fast towards the end.

Having never read a book about parkour or field hockey before, this book was both a surprise and a stretch of my suspension of disbelief. What it lacked in realistic plot points, it made up for in fun action sequences and an enjoyable cast. The characters were given space to be messy and make mistake, but were called out on those mistakes and held responsible for making things right. The parent/child dynamics were compelling and relatable, if a little frustrating for all three parties. Overall, an enjoyable read!

A powerful and incredibly well-crafted and empowering story, necessary for young women and men today.
It covers very difficult issues with power, grace, and intensity. It's full of strong girls banding together and fighting back, together. Loved it!

Revenge plots are some of my favorite so this book was at the top of my to-read list. I am so glad to say I loved this! While there were heavy topics discussed in this novel, I thought they were handled well especially for being in a Young Adult book. I also was a huge fan of how Zoe's team rallied with her, that is something that is so important to me personally, but I also think that level of friendship is so important to showcase.

Great story with important lessons of empathy. Emma Kress’s debut is written with a nice even flow but is still fast paced. The characters are so well developed because of the layered story. In what could be a very hard topic, the writing helps to handle the situation in an engaging manner. The family dynamics were great and really help to make the story relatable.

I think Dangerous Play does an excellent job of spreading awareness about a lot of problems. The book touched on a lot of topics like sexual assault, rape, which were difficult to discuss but the author managed to bring out the emotions of the characters and their feelings regarding these topics in an impressive way. Also, I love how female friendships are being more and more represented in books and Dangerous Play does a wonderful job for it.

I loved how the main character, Zoe was written. She seemed like a normal girl who was neither perfect nor wrong but struggling through what life had given her, just like the rest of us. I enjoyed to read how a group of very different girls came together while forming the team of field hockey and how they stuck with each other till the end. Although the descriptions of field hockey games became a bit too descriptive, they added to the thrill of the games and showed how these matches impacted the lives of these girls on the team.

Overall, it’s a perfect blend of female friendships, sports, and just struggling through high school. I would definitely recommend it.

This book is so enjoyable! I flew threw it and really loved all of the characters. I loved the girl power and the excitement I felt while reading! I think this is a great book for teens to read.

Zoe and Ava have spent all summer training girls from their school to become the best field hockey "fockey" team in their school league, come the fall season. During their last beach training game, the game is interrupted by a girl stumbling in, all out of sorts, with her clothes done up all wrong. She keeps going and the team think nothing more of it, until she also tries out for the field hockey team and makes it. Then Zoe is sexually assaulted at a party and all of a sudden her world is turned upside down and she decides she needs to do something in order to win her strength back and to overcome her fear.

Highly recommend this book to everyone, it was so well written and so powerful!

I will not lie, this was a very hard book to read, but not because it was not well written, but because of the tough subject matter. However, I think the story was handled really well. Zoe and Nikki's assault experiences were very different, they processed their emotions very differently, but they had each other to help with the betrayal they felt from their bodies, their school and their community. This shows how different each story of assault and rape can be, but how the main outcome if a loss of power, a loss of self. It was such an important book to read in terms of how the world in general still fails to protect women and the LGBTQIA+ community from assault and harassment.

The book highlights how assault adversely affects every aspect of the victims life. Zoe's field performance in fockey plummets, as she is trying to win the championship, so she can seen by a scout from her college of choice (since she needs a scholarship to go to school). It affects her relationships at home, as she hides what happened from her parents in shame. It affects the relationship with her team as they move further into their vigilante justice. She is scared in her school, of running into the kid who assaulted her. She feels wrong in her own body, thinking she was strong, but now is weak. The book helped to really make you feel what Zoe is going through, her pain, her disbelief.

Zoe convinces the team that vigilante justice is their only course of action, and convinces the reader of the same. But, as their "protection" of other young women escalates, both Zoe and the reader begin to see the flaws in this logic. We begin to see the similarities between what the team is doing and those young men who are assaulting women. Instead of hiding in the shadows, the most powerful thing Zoe, and others who have suffered sexual assault, can do is to speak out. However, Zoe has an amazing support system, a group of people surrounding her with love and trust, ones who will raise their voices with her, but not everyone has that system in place. So, it is up to those like Zoe to speak out, to raise awareness, to try to stop the parties that result in rape, in order to help those who are too frightened to talk, or who are unable to.

​In the novel, Zoe and her team work together to protect each other, instill hope and trust in each other. Where the school fails them time and again, even to go so far as to blame one of their members for protecting herself from assault, the team sticks up for each other and both push boundaries and reign each other in. Their love for one another is beautiful, and necessary for young women and those in marginalized communities. To have a group that you trust enough to express your emotions, or that you trust enough to listen to when you go too far. Zoe's team listen to her, comfort her, encourage her, but also try their hardest to show her how far she is slipping away from herself.

I really like the relationship between Zoe and Grove as well. It was interesting to see her associate her first kiss with Grove with her assault, as they happened on the same night. This connection sours her on Grove, without him knowing, and he therefore becomes mad at her. But, through the course of the novel they share, they talk, and he continues to be a good person. He listens, asks for consent constantly (from the beginning) and apologizes for his actions even before he knows why Zoe was acting the way she was. He was such an opposite to the young men perpetuating the rape culture in the school. Grove, and his friends, are exactly how we wish young men would be raised, would grow, to be conscious of their culpability, of their ability to be better, of it being their task to ask permission, to understand the culture of consent. Bravo!

This book was phenomenal, had me seething with rage, on the verge of tears, and bursting with pride for these amazingly brave pack of fockey players. This book will stay with me for a long time and maybe if more people read it they would see or realize the injustices that young women and those in marginalized groups face daily. Assault is so prevalent and still the onus is on women, or others, to protect themselves, not on young men to respect others bodies.

please let teenage girls say the word fuck
this had fairly good bones to it but it ended up feeling pretty flat. i didn't feel invested in any of the girls really, even though they were dealing with some really difficult things.
i also did not care at all for all the sports talk.

I picked up this book because I see so few books about field hockey and was super intrigued. I wasn't sure about the vigilantism from the outset, since its easy for attempts at moral grayness to go awry. And sadly, that's what I feel really happened here.

Zoe and her field hockey team are on a path for greatness. They have been training hard all summer, picked up a fierce new recruit, and are ready to take their game all the way this year. After all, it's Zoe's junior year, and she is in definite need of a scholarship. It seems that nothing can get in her way--that is, until it really sinks in for her just how her team is treated by the boys at her school.

From the very beginning, these boys are over-the-top gross. It made the first few chapters really difficult to read, to be honest. It's just constant verbal, and sometimes physical, assault. The kind of thing that is just objectively bad - and yet somehow all of the adults around seem to just let it go and blame the girls for speaking up and pushing back. So when the girls decide to go rogue and terrorize these boys themselves, it does seem weirdly justifiable, even when they go way over the top too. Because clearly justice is not coming any other way.

There were two main things that really diminished the quality of this book for me: (1) Sexual assault is often so much more nuanced than what is portrayed here; the world is not easily bifurcated into "good guys" and "bad guys." While I have no doubt a lot of girls and women can recognized the Reillys and Jamisons in their lives, I have similarly little doubt that there is a boy or man who could see themselves in their shoes. Everyone sees themselves as a Grove. (2) There are no real consequences for anyone - including the girls who take justice into their own hands, despite being investigated by the police (not to mention that the resolution to that was completely unrealistic).

And it feels petty, but I can't not mention that a close runner-up here is the constant overuse of plays on the word "fockey" and the use of that word in general, along with "sticks chicks" and chants like "We got sticks! / We got balls! / Don't you call us baby dolls!" Ridiculous. Lastly, I really struggled with the portrayal of Dylan and her experience in foster care. From the stereotype of kids in care as constantly getting in trouble and hanging with the bad crowd (notice she was the one who offered up a gun first) to the stereotype of her foster parents as completely disinterested in her wellbeing and just viewing her as a burden to the magical adoption and "dream home" that came out of nowhere at the end, it was all just so surface-level and added nothing to the story except to perpetuate these stereotypes.

Overall, I really would have loved to see more depth and nuance, as Dangerous Play took on some really hard-hitting topics. But I like the theme of sports bringing girls together and making them feel powerful, parents who are patient and understanding with their kids, the push for girls to stand up for themselves even when they may get hurt, and the slight nudge at the end for boys to police each other. It's a decently ok book, it just wasn't anything really special for me.

My thanks to NetGalley and Roaring Book Press for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

“We hold more power than anyone told us we could.”

DANGEROUS PLAY is a compelling young adult novel about a high school girls’ field hockey team who take revenge into their own hands. The story follows Zoe, the team captain, who is sexually assaulted at a party. Frustrated by the prevalence of sexual violence, she and the rest of the team become vigilantes, meting out justice and working to keep other girls safe.

I had mixed feelings about this book. It’s a novel about the effects of individual experiences of sexual assault and rape culture more broadly, about how the systems meant to protect survivors so often fail at doing so, and about the complexities of figuring out how to fight back. I generally love the feminist revenge vibe. I like that we see some of how Zoe grapples with having a relationship with a guy after her assault. I wish we had more about what that was like for her and how she processes and heals from the trauma she experienced. The novel goes into “not all men” territory by using language like “good ones” and “bad ones” (which is a problem since it plays into the idea that only people who can cause this kind of harm are evil and in some obvious way) and by generally focusing on individual boys and men and not rape culture and its accomplices.

A few more thoughts: There’s enough sports to pump you up and keep your attention (including a surprising amount of parkour) but not so much sports that it drags. I liked the strong sense of community that develops within the team, especially as they take risks and learn and grow together. We get a few side sapphic characters. While it seems like the author makes a solid attempt at keeping an intersectional perspective, a few parts felt more white savior-ish, and the overall focus is on the white main character’s growth and increasing her awareness of racism, classism, and other forms of oppression she doesn’t personally experience. Also, some of the dialogue feels a bit cheesy - but then again, it is YA.

I’ve avoided writing this because I dislike having mixed feelings about a book, especially since I was excited about the premise and have loved similar books. Sometimes I feel like I’m too harsh a judge on books written about issues I’m particularly involved in, so I guess take this with a grain of salt. Thanks to Macmillan for the eARC and OrangeSky Audio for the ALC!

Content warnings: attempted & actual sexual assault/rape (one described in depth), sexual harassment, injury

dangerous play is a very special book. engaging, important and beautifully written, I read it in one sitting. (I couldn't put it down, obviously). The topics it covers are very intense, and told with refined anger yet with the utmost care. It's got to be one of my favorite books of the year.

Fresh take on the YA sports novel-a team of field hockey players take on sexual assault AND the state championship! For once a girls' sport gets just as much action as if it were a novel featuring football or basketball and these girls are fierce. They also love parkour in their free time, adding to the sports coverage. But along with all that you get a powerful message about how to effect change for real-that using your voice is more effective than using your fists, that it takes unity and strength to amplify those voices. These young women make mistakes, and admit when they're wrong. A multi-racial, diverse group of characters and situations makes this book a winner.