Tennis Lessons by Susannah Dickey

Title: Tennis Lessons

Author: Susannah Dickey

Publisher: Transworld

Published Date: July 9th 2019

Length: 333 pages

Genre: Fiction, Contemporary, Romance, Women’s Lit

Rating: 3.25 /5

You know you’re strange and wrong. You’ve known it from the beginning.

This is the voice that rings in your ears. That worries you never say the right thing and you’re probably a disappointment to your parents. That you’re a far cry from pretty – and your thoughts are ugly too. It says no one will ever like you just as you are.

But you know what it is to laugh with your best friend until your stomach hurts, to feel the first delicious tingles of attraction, to take exquisite pleasure in the goriness of your ingrowing toenail.

There is a place for you out there. You just need to find it.

TENNIS LESSONS is the unflinchingly honest story of one misfit and her uncertain journey to something like happiness. Stopping by each year along the way, she navigates disastrous dates, dead pets, crashed cars, best friends and lost loves. Susannah Dickey reminds us that we’re all a bit weird. And that’s just fine. 

+++++

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK for giving me a chance!

Now, onto the book. For a book that is just over two hundred and fifty pages, I sure took my time finishing it. It’s just…second person is not something I will ever be comfortable with, I think. The concept is something I thoroughly got interested in and the author really made a great try at it.

The story is about a young girl growing up and fumbling through the many obstacles and weirdness that is just being a teenager. I enjoyed the story style, it’s staggered and more like snippets shared from a life than the actual life. Considering the main character, I think it really works well. The feeling of being lost while just stepping into the adulthood is something a lot of people can relate to and it’s written well.

Sometimes the writing got a bit too…fancy which, I don’t think, matched the overall tone of the book but that’s not to say the book doesn’t flow well. It was just a bit jarring sometimes. I think that I am not ever gonna be a fan of second person POV and that’s one of the main problems I had with this book. That’s on me and not the book, perhaps. I can’t stay completely objective about the book if I am to say what pleased me and what didn’t.

I think a lot of people will certainly be able to relate to quite a number of things that the main character goes through. The friendships and how the young woman navigates through all that is something I really felt in my heart. Gosh, I think, we are a few generations who are still wondering why our life is so messed as it is now and how we are going to actually come out of it or a worse question, will we come out of this mess.

Overall, I really enjoyed the way the story unfolded, the feeling of not being good enough or being like ‘normal’ is something we are all familiar with in our way. So this will be an interesting read for that reason alone.