Bruised

"Amazing book, so moving and authentic. Loved the diversity of characters!"

"Contemporary, romance. WLW. Main character joins roller derby and meets someone… for focused on the romance part less so the derby part. MAJOR TRIGGER WARNING!! Self harm, other trigger warnings, death of parents, grief, car accident, emotional abuse, transphobia. Difficulty level 2/5. 3⭐️"

"i need more dollar derby queers"

"Amazing. It does have s/h imagery (no c/tting) so be aware of that. But a great book that handles the topic well. I also learned so much about roller derby!!"

"This is a young adult novel about a young woman (the character is still in high school but she's 18) who joins a roller derby league while dealing with unresolved personal trauma.<br/><br/>Like a lot of other reviews, I was surprised how severe the self-harm content was, and how often it came up in the book. Daya is also extremely obnoxious for the first half of the novel as a self-defence mechanism. It's understandable but it does make parts of the book a slog to get through. The romance was fine but a little underwhelming. Daya obviously benefited but the love interest kind of felt like a prop. The storyline with Kat dragged on way too long and never really felt resolved.<br/><br/>I did like the parts about the derby itself and all its events. Daya’s friend Fee and most of her derby friends were fun characters. I think it's valuable as well to show a character who is still struggling with trauma despite a supportive environment, and I loved how kind and understanding Daya’s aunt and uncle were about her sexuality since you don't usually see that in novels about immigrant families.<br/><br/>The second half of the book was wonderful, but I'm rating it a bit lower for the rough first half. I would not recommend this book to anyone with a history of self-harm because the narrative dwells on it for so long but I would recommend it to anyone else."

"One of my favorites from this year! A book about roller derby! What more need I say?! I play roller derby so I appreciated all of the unique derby names, the derby action and the relationship of Daya with her fellow rookies and teammates. Daya was a complicated character and I loved her but she had her issues. She struggled with events from her past and how she worked through them at the start was through bruising. This the title. I loved her growth throughout the story. I also enjoyed the many other unique and fun characters like Shanti and her sister, their grandmother and her partner, Daya's musical loving aunt and uncle and so many more. The story was equal parts fun, serious and cute! Highly recommend to fans of derby, that identify as LGBTQAI anyone for that matter!"