Front and Center by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

4 stars -- I liked it

I seem to be catching up on my series this weekend!

Front and Center is the third book in the Dairy Queen series (Dairy Queen and The Off Season being the first two books), and I liked it just as well as I liked the first two books.

D.J., our main character, is a sports-loving girl who comes from a very athletic family. In the first book, the author focuses on D.J.'s relationship with Brian, a fellow jock from a rival school. It also shows D.J.'s family and how much she gives up (basketball) for her father.

In book two, D.J. joins her school's all-boys football team, and she's great at it. Of course, tension arises when she has to play against Brian and his team, and in the end, their relationship ends.

This book follows D.J. back into basketball, into a new relationship with a likable character, and into her dilemma regarding college.

I think what I like about these stories is that D.J. is just so darn believable. She's not academically smart, and she's not cocky. She's very shy and while, as the reader of her internal dialogue, we can see how intelligent she is (and sometimes isn't), we also get how hard it is for her to communicate what she wants to others.

I also had to cheer her on regarding her relationship with Brian. She obviously still has strong feelings for Brian, but when he treats her wrongly, she lets him know it. And she desperately tries to stick to her ultimatum throughout. Just because she wants to talk to him doesn't mean she lets herself.

I don't know much about sports, so I can't critique the rightness or wrongness of how she is when she plays, but it feels right to me. And D.J.'s brutal honesty (about herself mostly) rings true for how most females feel about themselves, if only expressed more simply/bluntly.

I really like the Dairy Queen books, and I'm not even a sports fan. :)