[this review may be a bit all-over-the-place. i performed in a musical last night and, frankly, am pretty exhausted].

i can see why people would like I Felt Myself Slipping, but for me it mostly didn’t click (i’ve had a lifelong fascination with gymnastics though, so i did really enjoy that aspect). particularly the time period didn’t make sense to me. it’s set in 1996-97 (in midwest america), but everything is very queernormative (Kota’s friends say multiple times that she should ask Riley out, Riley has two dads). obviously queernormative settings are awesome, but to me it just didn’t make sense here, and the queernormativity is never discussed which just left me struggling to figure out when this was set. this could have been fixed by, idk, maybe something like Kota’s friend group being generally queer and that being disclosed in the book? just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me otherwise, considering the place and time period setting.

if you have an interest in gymnastics, i’d definitely recommend this, but otherwise not really. it has the curse of being just a bit meh.