When You Least Expect It

by Lorna Schultz Nicholson

Overview

Avid competitive rower Holly is seventeen. There is nothing she wishes for more than to compete in the Olympics. When she fails to make the rowing team that is going to Europe she is shattered. Her dream has exploded and she is left dealing with the disappointment. She is also confronting a new reality at home: she and her mother have moved in with her mother's boyfriend and his two sons. And then her mother announces she is pregnant. . . a situation she has been hiding from Holly.

This news is a blow to the close relationship Holly thought she had with her mother. And it provokes her to conceal secretly taking up training as a single-scull rower with a coach who has his own tragic story. And when Holly starts seeing someone who could become a significant romantic partner, she hides that from her mother as well. How long can you keep secrets like this? This page-turning story is enhanced by fascinating detail of what it means to be a competitive rower — as well as an emotional core that is powerful and compelling.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780889956414
Publisher:	Red Deer Press
Publication date:	11/30/2021
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 7.00(h) x 1.03(d)
Age Range:	12 - 16 Years

About the Author

Lorna Schultz Nicholson is the acclaimed author of A Time to Run, Bent Not Broken, Born With and Fragile Bones. She lives in Edmonton, Alberta.

Editorial Reviews

2021-09-15
Seventeen-year-old Holly spends her summer secretly training in competitive rowing.

All Holly Callahan had been looking forward to this summer was traveling to Europe with the Junior Canadian Rowing Team—so she’s devastated when she narrowly misses making the cut. In their small Ontario city, Holly and her mother have recently moved in with her mother’s too-cheerful new boyfriend and his tween sons. To make matters worse, Holly learns her mother’s pregnant and has been hiding the big news. To distract herself, she gets a job hostessing where she meets attractive, kind Tim, the restaurant’s assistant manager, who shows a romantic interest in her. When the recreational rowing team is a bust, Holly finds herself coached to row a single by Alan, a serious man hiding a tragic past. Though he encourages her to tell her mother about their sessions, Holly lies to her family about her hours spent practicing, focused on making it to a big regatta. While the main story is told in first-person prose from Holly’s perspective, alternating chapters in verse from a mysterious narrator’s point of view add an intriguing element, leading up to an interesting reveal. However, with one-note characters and extensive descriptions of rowing training bogging down the plot, this sports-centered novel will mostly appeal to rowing fans. Main characters are White; Tim is Black.

Emotional, if lacking in substance. (rowing glossary, author interview) (Fiction. 12-17)

Kirkus Reviews