My Week in Book Review: How It Feels to Fly

How It Feels to Fly by Katherine Holmes

Sam has always known she’d be a professional dancer—but that was before her body betrayed her, developing unmanageable curves in all the wrong places. Lately, the girl staring back at Sam in the mirror is unrecognizable. Dieting doesn’t work, ignoring the whispers is pointless, and her overbearing mother just makes it worse.

Following a series of crippling anxiety attacks, Sam is sent to a treatment camp for teens struggling with mental and emotional obstacles. Forced to open up to complete strangers, Sam must get through the program if she wants to attend a crucial ballet intensive later in the summer. It seems hopeless until she starts confiding in a camp counselor who sparks a confidence she was sure she’d never feel again. But when she’s faced with disappointing setbacks, will Sam succumb to the insecurity that imprisons her?

Spoilers coming at ya!

This book was an easy 5 stars for me. I loved the characters—teens who are highly talented athletes and performers but who struggle with various forms of anxiety that inhibit their performance. I loved the setting—Perform at Your Peak, or “Crazy Camp,” as one surly camper puts it. I loved how our main character, Sam, thinks she’s getting past her problems only to find that she’s not, then reaches down deep inside herself to fix what’s really wrong.

So, let’s get into it. Sam doesn’t want to be at camp. However, a panic attack in front of her ballet classmates landed her here instead of at an important summer ballet intense, and the only way she goes to the intensive is if she gets a handle on her anxiety and then gets into the intensive off the waitlist. So she’s motivated to be there, but at the same time, she has no confidence that the camp can help her. Thanks to unexpected weight gain, she feels like she’s fat, she thinks everyone thinks she’s fat, and the voice in her head tells her nothing will ever change.

For the first half of the book, we see her hardcore struggle with her image issues. She’s sensitive to comments and situations that hint that she won’t make it as a professional dancer, and she freaks out during a trust exercise where she’s blindfolded and her partner, camp counselor Andrew, accidentally lets her almost roll an ankle (her mom’s ballerina career ended when she broke her ankle). The voice in Sam’s head won’t shut up about how she looks in comparison to everyone else, how the ballet world doesn’t want a fat dancer, and how she needs to eat less, even though she’s barely eating at all. She practically goes catatonic when the group goes swimming and she has to show her body in a swimsuit. Aside from the mental health issues, she also has to deal with her mom calling daily to check in on her progress (and diet), a roommate with a bad attitude, and a growing crush on Andrew, who can’t possibly like her and her fat body back—right?

Well, that remains to be seen. As the book progresses, Andrew consistently connects with Sam. He calls her beautiful, gives her a (chocolate) kiss, and even sneaks out after hours with her to do partner dancing in the moonlight. Sam starts to believe in herself again. If Andrew can see the beauty in her, maybe she can see it in herself, too. She also starts to feel closer to her fellow campers as they all open up and help each other with their anxiety. Things are going well enough that she even gets the guts to tell her mom that she needs some space and that she can’t call her every day. This is such a fun section of the book. One bit I especially liked was when each of the campers was given a different challenge to complete to deal with his or her anxiety. It was fun to see how they dealt with them together—the group really feels unified at this point.

Unfortunately, things can’t keep going well or this would be a boring story. Sam starts feels so confident in herself and her newfound worth that she decides to take a leap of faith—by showing Andrew how she feels about him. That leads to her kissing him in the moonlight . . . and getting rejected! It turns out that Andrew only ever thought of her as a friend. He was extra nice to her because he wanted to help her with her anxiety, but he was never interested. He’s too old for her, he’s got a girlfriend, he’s her peer counselor, etc. Well, it’s all downhill from here. Andrew fesses up to the camp director and gets fired. Sam finds out that her ballet intensive is full and she can’t attend after all no matter how much she improves at Perform at Your Peak. She feels so awful that she gorges herself on crappy food and then gets this close to making herself throw it up. A fellow camper helps her through this lowest point, but with the bulimic scare past, she just withdraws. What does she have to try for anymore? Andrew didn’t want her; ballet doesn’t want her. She’s on the verge of giving up.

It’s seeing one of the other campers succeed on her challenge—a gymnast facing her fear of heights—that finally kicks Sam back into gear. She realizes that she doesn’t want to stop living—or stop dancing. In her words, “I know how it feels to fly. I want that feeling back.” The solution? Steal a camp van, drive to the ballet intensive, and petition to re-audition. Which she does. Successfully. But—then it doesn’t work out. While she impresses the intensive’s head, Ms. Levanova, the intensive is still full and Ms. Levanova bluntly states that the ballet world won’t accept the way Sam looks. However, Ms. Levanova gives her another choice—joining a contemporary dance intensive later that summer and expanding her options for a professional dance career. Sam hesitates because it’s not what she thought she wanted, but she ultimately realizes that it’s okay to be open to a new dream and that complete control over her future isn’t a prerequisite for happiness. She has to face the music for stealing a camp van, but she also gets to square with her mom about how she feels (that’s a fun conversation), share her epiphanies with the camp director, and start on the road toward accepting herself without the caveat of other people’s approval of or interest in her. The last chapter puts her at the contemporary dance intensive, moving forward.

This is a great book. The pacing is beautiful, and it’s really enjoyable to see the different campers (whose talents range from acting to ice skating to football) and how anxiety affects each of them differently. At the start, their anxiety inhibits their ability to do the things they love, but over the course of the book, they all take steps towards managing their anxiety instead of being controlled by it. Something about the combo of talented teens, summer camp, anxiety, and friendship just really made this book for me. To tag off that, I think what I like best about it are the two twists.

The first: for a good chunk of the book, Sam thinks she’s getting better because Andrew likes her for who she is. After she gets rejected, though, she realizes that she can only get better if she likes herself.

The second: Sam goes to all this trouble to get to the ballet intensive and audition, and then she doesn’t get in! Buzzkill . . . but no, because what she learns is more important—ballet isn’t the only path for her. It’s not the only thing that can give her life meaning and value. Her grand act of sneaking off to reaudition at the intensive could have been as a bit cliché if everything had just worked out from there—and honestly, that’s what I expected to happen—but her not getting in made the story feel real and so much deeper.

So. This book is great. Read it.