Girl Out Of Water by Nat Luurtsema

In this book we meet Lou an avid swimmer until she doesn't beat her record and fails to make her swim camp dream come true to possibly compete in the Olympics one day.

She fights off jealousy as her best friend and only friend from her school, Hannah makes the team and thus leaves her behind even though they keep in touch during the novel via text as Lou tries to make new friends and Hannah starts to suffer with mental and physical health and raises alarm bells on Lou.

As Lou awkwardly tries to make friends she finds herself helping out three guys in her school who want to enter Britain Has Talent as synchronised swimmers.

Lou is a fun protagonist and a friend you could dream to have as shows her caring nature over her friend and family. I had heard a lot about this book, all good and I have to say I agree it is a great read as not many teen fiction books focus on swimming as a passion usually it's a lot of love and growing up topics instead of the love of a hobby which added a great soon on this novel.

Beautiful Bodies by Kimberley Rae Miller

In this memoir about lifestyle, nutrition and bodies, Kimberley opens up on her life and opinions about how harmful so called diet culture can be in modern day.

Talking openly about her struggles with weight and anorexia like behaviour, to gaining all the weight back after another restrictive and dangerous diet.

Talking about diet culture and media influence, as well as her own early modelling days and adults telling her younger self to watch her weight, we learn how damaging and worrying it plants itself into youngsters and still happens nowadays too.

She also talks about refeeding syndrome and how it takes time to repair metabolic damage once it has occurred, it can take months to repair properly a damaged metabolism.

Kimberley has opened her life to us for judging, relating and commiserating with through every high and low all women face she is brave and beautiful for doing so, any girl who has struggled will appreciate this book.

Up For Air by Laurie Morrison

Annabelle struggles in school but has an amazing talent for being a fast swimmer on their team. She feels undeserving of her school place due to her lack of academic achievements and her struggle to learn unlike her friends Mia and Jeremy.

Her crush Connor always pays her attention especially as she now swims with his high school aged friends as she's advanced at swimming.

With summer arriving she discovers a letter from her dad as well as an invitation that she should go see him sometime.

However as summer gets off to a good start soon she's fallen out with friends, feels let down by the guys and winds up hurt and questioning her life completely feeling increasingly sad and pointless a lot of the time she to her lack of school skills.

Kayla her best friend Jeremy's sister who's been in treatment for anorexia and it helps Annabelle to see someone else who's struggling carrying on and dealing with life being strong even though it's tough.

I did enjoy this book but it wasn't as good as I hoped, instead I found it quite juvenile in the way that Annabelle behaves towards her crush and handles her school life wanting to get better but then not helping herself at all she just bugged me at times. However the book did do well at showing how an absent parent can lead you to acting out on impulse as she does as well as the inclusion in the book of a girl with anorexia as the book is sports focused is a good move to look into the world of sport and how your focus becomes on how you can be the best.

Splash! by Charli Howard

In this book, Molly is an aspiring swimmer growing up with her grandparents who champion her natural talent in water.

However as the pressure of facing secondary school loom, her best friend Chloe starts acting out being mean towards everyone. As she starts making jibes at Molly about her weight alike some horrid boys Molly encounters at the swimming pool.

When her absent mother finally turns up, she doesn't get the dream reunion she wants and as she fails to impress Chloe, she feels pressure to please and ends up losing her best guy friend after hurting his feelings when she lashes out.

All about the pressures of school, bullying, weight and appearance this is an essential, necessary read for teens and preteens growing up into an image based world.

Nothing Tastes As Good by Claire Hennessey

Julia is a girl affected by her past, Annabel is the voice urging her on into disordered eating, a voice of a girl who died due to her anorexia.

In order to get a message home from beyond the grave, Annabel must help Julia to become happy believing Julia is stressed and sad because of her pressure she puts on herself to be perfect, flawless in her future career as a journalist and run the school newspaper efficiently.

However as deeper issues surrounding an older man come to light, broken friendships, new friendships and even a relationship bloom and soon Julia is destroying but living her life at the same time during her rocky patch inspired by Annabel's memory.

This was a strange read personifing yet making anorexia a ghost at the same time. Julia was a believable character to suffer as you see her become engrossed in discovering Annabel and her desire to be perfect on the newspaper team.  It was realistic but could be triggering at places too. I feel the writing flitted from amateurish to just uninteresting in areas but I finished the story and that was good overall.

We Are All Made Of Molecules by Susin Nielsen

Stuart and Ashley are forced together as their parents, Caroline and Leonard move in together.

For Stuart he lost his mum to ovarian cancer and used to want a sister as he recalls his childhood early on and Ashley's dad came out as gay and moves on with boyfriend, Michael where as Ashley wished he hadn't and can't face telling people.

Ashley soon warms to Stuart little by little after finding out he gets to be around and talk to Jared her crush. But soon enough after they get talking she realises Jared isn't as nice as she thought he was after an incident at her house where Stuart is to the rescue which also helps her opinion of him improve again.

I really loved the concept of Stewart keeping his mum's blanket and feeling closer to her as he has the idea her molecules are on it, it's a lovely comforting idea.

The book tackles homophobia, being in the LGBTQIA community, divorce, death, step parenting and acceptance. Each issue is pretty much set to one key character and played out through them with an overlap on divorce and parenting being for both Stuart and Ashley. At first Stuart seemed intriguing and Ashley vain and harsh in her attitude but we do soon seen her and Stuart's development character wise as they both change their opinions of each other and their newly combined lives together. I loved the dual perspective of how each now sibling was feeling and adapting to their lives colliding and it worked better than if it had just been from one perspective overall, great work Susin!