BOOK REVIEW: Practice Girl by Estelle Laure
Book Review
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Book Review 🤼
Written by: Astrid (Senior Bookseller)
Practice Girl opens up with a scene that would have been unthinkable in any YA novel I read as a teenager: the protagonist, Jo, has just finished having sex with Tyler, one of the wrestlers on the team she manages. She thinks that this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship, and her interactions with him are suffused with hopeful awkwardness until he sheepishly says that he’s glad that the whole thing won’t ruin their friendship. Jo, of course, is devastated, but this is nothing new for her. Her father was a high school wrestling coach who did intramural coaching on the side, and she’s known all three (now four) guys she’s been involved with - including her best friend Sam - since they were kids. She used to wrestle with them, too, but switched to managing the team after her father died.
The book’s setup - a teenage girl with “daddy issues” who gets involved with guy after guy hoping to find love and is always devastated when it turns out that he didn’t care about her as much as he said he did - is the kind of situation that young boys and men who subscribe to people like Andrew Tate (or follow any of the dozens of incels, MRAs, pickup artists, and other assorted reactionaries polluting TikTok and Youtube) would salivate over. In fact, our culture has never been kind to the women and girls who settle for sex when they wish it came with love. These women are derided as stupid sluts who should have Known Better, and in YA novels of the past Jo wouldn’t have been treated any differently. Instead, her feelings are handled with care. In the scene that instigates the book’s central conflict, Jo is unlucky enough to not only overhear Tyler ask out the girl he really likes but reassure her that he’d never leave her for Jo because she’s just a “practice girl,” the kind of girl guys use to make sure they can please the girls they really care about. So many of the books I read growing up would have made Jo the butt of the joke, would have made her pain a spectacle. But here, she’s allowed to nurse her anger and pain in private and let it harden into a new resolve: to quit acting as the team’s manager and become a wrestler in her own right.
It’s extremely satisfying to see Jo realize how much sexism she’s faced from her teammates. The extra work she’d do as a manager was an extension of her desire to twist herself into something smaller for the guys she pursued, and she smugly watches the team struggle to pick up her slack. Her best friend, Sam, knew what her not-quite exes were doing and did nothing to stop it, and the book wastes no time having Jo call him out for not standing up for her; the thought of giving him credit for not participating himself is laughable. But Jo’s not above criticism herself. Girls internalize sexism, too, and some of Jo’s biggest flaws stem from her tendency to see herself as “one of the guys.” She derides femininity, devalues potential friendships with other girls, and channels her unacknowledged feelings for Sam through her smug condescension toward his girlfriend, Jen. Jo is at her worst there, but even then the author refuses to treat her with anything less than absolute empathy. Jo’s struggle to realize her faults and grow from them makes her feel more like a person than a mouthpiece and makes the book as compelling as it is vindicating.
Jo herself is an amazing protagonist. Her ferocity and intelligence make the book’s wrestling matches breathtaking to read, and her journey toward vulnerability and self-acceptance is engaging even when you want to strangle her because she’s 100 percent committed to everything she does. She makes Practice Girl a delight to read, and I’m glad that today’s young readers have her to look up to.
