Love the visual style although it made it difficult to read the text sometimes. Everything else though, from story to characters, fell kind of flat. Like it was trying to address larger issues of integration and being a minority in America while trying to grow up as independent people separate from family but mostly it was one chaotic fight after another. Partway through I forgot this was a roller derby league and not just teams beating the snot out of each other.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review!

I was interested in reading this because it's about a high school girl joining a roller derby team! I was thinking this would be sort of like Whip It, but set in the 1970's. It very much is not like that movie. This book fell flat for me. The plot is all over the place, and a bit hard to follow. I'm still unsure if this book is supposed to be reality-based or fantastical. The introductory scene confused me quite a bit, and I'm still not sure if it's supposed to be a flashback or a dream. Both? There were many scenes where I thought it was just Wild imagining the entire thing, until other characters comment on it, and I realized that nope, it's reality. The world of Wild is just that weird. It doesn't help that Wild, the main protagonist DOES have an imaginary version of her roller derby hero that she talks to and gets advice from sometimes. As far as I can tell, Wild's version of Rosie is imaginary. (Also, I can tell from the jump, the plot twist with Rosie is that it's her Mom or someone her Mom knew) The scenes of the roller derby fights were really hard to follow. I'm pretty sure a derby match doesn't allow for two players to monologue for THAT much while standing right in the middle of the track. The way the scenes are drawn makes a lot of the plot hard to follow. There were moments when I couldn't tell the order in which the panels were meant to be read since it was drawn in a chaotic way. The art style of the overall book is just chaotic in general. The style seems to change from panel to panel Everything is drawn in some sort of shade of orange, so it made everything start to blend together visually. Page flow was non-existent. Some of the fonts used in this book were so stylized that they were impossible to read. Also, what's up with there very rarely being any backgrounds? I didn't really care for this, and I see it's the first volume in a series. I really have no interest in picking up the second volume.

Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to read a digital copy of this book in exchange for a review. All opinions are my own.

This book was a roller derby fever dream. I had a bit of a hard time following the plot, as it went back and forth between reality and dreams. This made it hard for me to connect with the story, but it was still entertaining enough to read. The art is also GORGEOUS. That was a huge factor towards my interest in this book.

I liked this. I’m looking forward to reading more volumes about these roller derby girls.

I liked this. I’m looking forward to reading more volumes about these roller derby girls.