The Recruit

Tessa knows a soccer scholarship is her best chance at going to college. She's the best player on her small-town high school team—but that doesn't mean much in the big world of college soccer.

Luckily, her best friend's sister plays for a nearby university. She offers to help Tessa make the team—but not for free. Tessa must join her snobby sorority, and ditch her high school boyfriend, who is simply not fraternity material. Tessa wonders if it's all worth the cost of admission.

"This volume in the Kick! series kicks off with Tessa Dobbs finishing her last season of high school soccer and wondering what the future holds for her. Tessa is a good player. But how good? It's not easy to know playing in a small rural town in the middle of nowhere. But when her best friend, Ellen, says her older sister, Sadie, might be able to connect her with Coach Miller from nearby Yates University, Tessa is excited. The coach comes to a game, sees Tessa punch in a game-winning penalty kick, and things are looking good. But status-seeking Sadie also wants Tessa to pledge the Omega Phi sorority and ditch her current boyfriend, Ben, deemed not cool enough for Sadie's crowd. When Tessa does, indeed, get accepted to Yates, does she owe Sadie? She knows Sadie is capable of making her life miserable if she doesn't break up with Ben, but why should she have to do that? For a hi-lo novel targeted at reluctant middle and high school readers, the conflict is realistic, nuanced, and not resolved too simplistically. Plenty of soccer action, told in a zippy present tense, will appeal to the intended audience. The series, with installments by different authors, follows the formula of soccer action wrapped around a central conflict. In Israel Keats' The Heir, Rob Briggs must decide what's more important, soccer or the Battle of the Bands competition. Malik, in Chris Kreie's The Captain, must carry his team on in the wake of a cheating scandal at school. And in The Natural, also by Kreie, Kamal's position on the team is threatened by a talented newcomer. Reluctant readers will not be so reluctant after The Recruit; in fact, they're likely to gobble up the entire series and become readers in the process, ready, perhaps, for more sophisticated fare such as Kwame Alexander's Booked (2016) and Edward Bloor's Tangerine (1997). Simple, literate soccer stories that just might turn soccer fans into readers."--Kirkus Reviews

4Q 5P M J S R "The Kick! series follows teens through realistic day-to-day issues all presented within high school soccer action. In The Recruit, Tessa, a talented soccer forward, knows she needs a scholarship to be able to go to college. When her best friend's sister leads to Tessa's opportunity to get one, Tessa is pressured to join a sorority and dump her boyfriend in order to fit in at the college. Tessa wrestles with the need for the scholarship and her gut feeling that what is being offered is not right for her. In The Heir, Rob, son of a world-famous soccer player and an unquestionably talented soccer player, faces his father's constant eagerness for him to succeed in the sport. Conflict arises when Rob discovers he likes playing guitar in a band. When a playoff game coincides with a gig, Rob knows what his father expects, but he must decide what he wants. Malik is the captain of the soccer team during his senior year in The Captain. What should be a wonderful final season disappears when the coach and several of Malik's teammates are embroiled in a cheating scandal. Malik struggles to deal with the scandal, a new coach, and new teammates.

These short, well-written stories will pull any reader--reluctant and avid--into the series. The situations and characters in each volume ring true. It will be difficult to keep copies on the shelf."--starred, VOYA