Being Sloane Jacobs by Lauren Morrill (review)

At sixteen, figure skater Sloane Emily Jacobs finds herself shying away from triple salchow jumps and suffering through family dinners, where her perfectionist mother can’t contain her disappointment and where Sloane can’t look her senator father—whom she recently caught in flagrante with a young staffer—in the eye. She also dreads attending skate camp in Montreal, where she will spend four grueling weeks working at a sport she is no longer sure she loves. Meanwhile, Sloane Devon Jacobs is also headed to Montreal, in her case after a blowup on the ice has her benched, making hockey camp there her last chance to control her temper; with her mother in rehab for alcohol abuse, she has a lot of anger to manage. When the two Sloanes’ luggage gets swapped at their hotel, and they overcome their immediate antipathy toward each other, they concoct a plan by which they can be Sloane Jacobs without being themselves at all. Told in the voices of both Sloanes (which proves slightly confusing in shared scenes), this is a feel-good story with flashes of honesty: the two girls learn to respect each other (and each other’s sport) without become besties, find themselves capable of surviving in unfamiliar territory without discovering latent genius, and ultimately make tentative peace with their families while knowing the road to healing will be long. Morrill understands and embraces the must-haves of satisfying teen fare; she breaks no new ground here with elements of uptown-meets-downtown and storied camp bullies, pranks, and romance, but she does strike a successful balance between the real and the rewarding. This book will suit romantics who hadn’t thought to wonder what would happen if The Parent Trap met The Cutting Edge.