Book picks similar to
Podium Finish by Beth Pond


young-adult
sports
romance
contemporary

Tumbling


Caela Carter - 2016
    One goal.Grace lives and breathes gymnastics—but no matter how hard she pushes herself, she can never be perfect enough.Leigh, Grace’s best friend, has it all: a gymnastics career, a normal high-school life…and a secret that could ruin everything.Camille wants to please her mom, wants to please her boyfriend, and most of all, wants to walk away.Wilhelmina was denied her Olympic dream four years ago, and she won’t let anything stop her again. No matter what.Monica is terrified. Nobody believes in her—and why should they?By the end of the two days of the U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Trials, some of these girls will be stars. Some will be going home with nothing. And all will have their lives changed forever.

Love Scene, Take Two


Alex Evansley - 2015
    He might actually be on his way to being really famous, especially if he'd nailed an audition for the lead role in the movie adaption of the newest bestselling young adult book series. There's just one problem: He totally blew the audition. And he's stuck in a tiny North Carolina airport. And his maybe-ex-girlfriend kind of just broke up with him.The weekend isn't exactly looking good until Bennett Caldwell, author of the very book series he just auditioned for, takes pity on him and invites him to her family's lake house. Away from the glitz and glam of Hollywood for a few days, Teddy starts to relax . . . and somehow he and Bennett just click. But dating is hard enough when you aren't the subject of several dozen fanblogs, and the Internet is full of juicy gossip about Teddy and Bennett . . . gossip that Bennett might not be prepared to handle.Chosen by readers like you for Macmillan’s young adult imprint Swoon Reads, Alex Evansley's debut novel, written from both Bennett and Teddy's perspectives, will have teens laughing, swooning, and falling in love along with these fantastically relatable characters.

Breathless


Jessica Warman - 2009
    She's smart, she's cute, and she's a swimming prodigy who has a first-class ticket to any Ivy League school of her choice. But what her new friends, roommate, and boyfriend don't know is that Katie is swimming away from the secrets of her past, and from the schizophrenic older brother, Will, who won't let her go. As Katie's star rises, Will descends deeper into insanity. And when he does the unthinkable, it's all Katie can do to keep her head above water. Largely based on the author's own experiences, Breathless is a stunning debut that explores illness and health, love and lust, friends and enemies, and the moneyed world of prep school with a deft, expert hand.

The Long Way Home


Erin Leigh - 2013
    She has it all. The right fiancé, money, looks, and connections. But everything comes at a cost. Sometimes that cost is looking the other way when the imperfections of your world start to show themselves. When something happens that she just can't look away from, she ends up drunk in a Chanel dress at a pity party on the beach in SC. There on the beach, she finally sees the cost of having everything is too high. Luckily, Jacqueline has one thing most girls like her do not, somewhere to run when she leaves it all behind. That somewhere happens to be to the open arms of the New York Rangers' right wing, Mike France. He has always been there through thick and thin, waiting for his chance to make her his. But how do you go from being best friends to lovers, when you know all the dirty details?

In the Penalty Box


Lynn Rush - 2021
    But one unlucky injury and now I’m down...but I’m definitely not out. I just need to rehab—a boatload of rehab—and who’d have thought I could do it on the boys’ hockey team?Of course, the infuriatingly hot captain of the team seems to think I’m nothing but sequins and twirls. What’s a girl to do but put him in his place? Game on.BrodieHockey is my whole world. I’ve worked my tail off getting my team in a position to win the championships—hopefully in front of major college scouts, too—so what’s a guy to do when a figure skater ends up as our new goalie?Of course, the distractingly sexy skater thinks I’m nothing but a testosterone-laced competitive streak. And surely she’s only biding her time to heal, then she’s gone. Game over.

The Assist


Rebecca Jenshak - 2018
    these are the things I knew about him. What I didn't know is that he is a seriously smart jock.Wes What's the best way to get rid of the peppy and unrelenting girl that keeps asking me to tutor her? If I knew, I wouldn't be staring at her tan legs and attempting to teach her statistics.Sorority girl, fine as f**k, determined, ball buster... these are the things I knew about her. What I didn't know is that she is all the things I didn't realize I wanted or needed.Or that one semester with her would change everything.

Rock My World: A Novel of Thongs, Spandex, and Love in G Minor


Liza Conrad - 2005
     Surrounded by lots of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, she's been on the road for as long as she can remember. With a father who was the lead singer of the popular band The Babydolls, and an ex-groupie for a mother, she had no choice but to grow up fast. Now at seventeen, Livy is finally close to having a normal life-until she lands an internship at the music magazine Rock On. Her first assignment? Follow the now-sober, more mature Babydolls across the globe on their reunion tour. It won't be easy to work alongside her dad, who's just now trying to be a responsible father. Armed with a pen, earplugs, and her best friend, Cammie, Livy's back on the road again. To complicate this already-too-complicated situation, her "musicians need not apply" dating rule is getting harder to obey-thanks to the lead singer of her Dad's opening band, who's hot enough to make Livy forget how much she wanted to leave the rock 'n' roll life behind.

A Longtime -and at one point illegal- Crush


Janette Rallison - 2013
    When she was eight, she secretly blew kisses to him. When she was twelve, she sat on the stairs unnoticed and watched him escort another girl to prom. When she was a senior in high school, she walked into math class and found out he was her new math teacher.With that much emotion fueling her, things were bound to go wrong. And they did. Elsie not only spent the last two weeks of school avoiding him, she turned avoiding-Kye-at-all-costs into her life-long philosophy.Now three years have passed and Elsie has come home for her brother’s wedding. She’s got to face Kye-–hopefully without getting crushed again.

The Fragile Ordinary


Samantha Young - 2018
    That she’ll be effortlessly cool and light up a room the way a comet blazes across the sky.But from the shyness that makes her book-character friends more appealing than real people to the parents whose indifference hurts more than an open wound, Comet has never wanted to be the center of attention. She can’t wait to graduate from her high school in Edinburgh, Scotland, where the only place she ever feels truly herself is on her anonymous poetry blog. But surely that will change once she leaves to attend university somewhere far, far away.When new student Tobias King blazes in from America and shakes up the school, Comet thinks she’s got the bad boy figured out. Until they’re thrown together for a class assignment and begin to form an unlikely connection. Everything shifts in Comet’s ordinary world. Tobias has a dark past and runs with a tough crowd—and none of them are happy about his interest in Comet. Targeted by bullies and thrown into the spotlight, Comet and Tobias can go their separate ways…or take a risk on something extraordinary.

Double Clutch


Liz Reinhardt - 2011
    twice... in one day?Brenna Blixen spent her freshman year homeschooling in Denmark; now that she’s back in the States, she’s determined to make her sophomore year unforgettable. And by unforgettable, she imagined awesome classes, fun friendships, and maybe a little romance. What she got was a whole lot of romance, and all at once.The same day that dark, brooding Saxon Maclean charmed her with his killer good looks and whip-smart wit, Jake Kelly stole her breath away with his heart-wrenching smile and intelligent, thoughtful focus.But Saxon is a proud player who makes it clear that he doesn’t know why he can’t get Brenna off of his mind and out of his system, and Jake’s sweet and humble attitude hides a secret past life that might be more darker and more complex than Brenna’s willing to handle.Complicating the matter is the fact that Saxon and Jake were once best friends and are now arch-enemies... and the more Brenna finds out about their connection to each other, the more intrigued and worried she becomes.Between keeping the peace with her lovingly over-protective parents, designing t-shirts for her high school’s rising punk band, keeping up her grades in both academic and technical high school, and running the track like a maniac, Brenna has enough to worry about with out juggling two guys who make her heart thud and drive her crazy all at once.She has to make a choice. But how can she when giving her heart to one of them might mean breaking the other’s?(Cover Design: Steven Peterson)Recommended Age: Older YA

13 Days of Midnight


Leo Hunt - 2015
    Unfortunately, Luke has no clue how to manage them, which the ghosts figure out pretty quickly. Armed with only his father’s indecipherable notes and a locked copy of The Book of Eight, Luke struggles to adapt to his new role as a necromancer. Meanwhile, the increasingly belligerent Host mutinies, possesses Luke’s mother, and forces him out of his own house.Halloween, the night when ghosts reach the height of their power, is fast approaching, and Luke knows his Host is planning something far more trick than treat. With the help of school outcast Elza Moss, who knows a bit about ghosts herself, Luke has just thirteen days to uncover the closely guarded secrets of black magic and send his unquiet spirits to their eternal rest.And if you thought it was going to be easy, you’d be dead wrong.

The Odds of Loving Grover Cleveland


Rebekah Crane - 2016
    But her parents insist that she get out of her head—and her home state—and attend Camp Padua, a summer camp for at-risk teens.Zander does not fit in—or so she thinks. She has only one word for her fellow campers: crazy. In fact, the whole camp population exists somewhere between disaster and diagnosis. There’s her cabinmate Cassie, a self-described manic-depressive-bipolar-anorexic. Grover Cleveland (yes, like the president), a cute but confrontational boy who expects to be schizophrenic someday, odds being what they are. And Bek, a charmingly confounding pathological liar.But amid group “share-apy” sessions and forbidden late-night outings, unlikely friendships form, and as the Michigan summer heats up, the four teens begin to reveal their tragic secrets. Zander finds herself inextricably drawn to Grover’s earnest charms, and she begins to wonder if she could be happy. But first she must come completely unraveled to have any hope of putting herself back together again.

Effortless With You


Lizzy Charles - 2013
    That is, until she lands in trouble one too many times and her parents issue the ultimate punishment: a summer job. Suddenly, the summer can't end fast enough.To make matters worse, the job is painting houses with Justin, the most popular, egotistical guy in school. Spending all summer with Justin might be other girls' dreams, but definitely not Lucy's. After all, Justin is cocky, annoying, and a jerk. So what if he's the most beautiful jerk Lucy's ever seen? Or that his grin makes her forget she’s mad at the world? Or that maybe, just maybe, there's more to Justin than Lucy realizes. Only one thing is certain: it won’t be the summer she wanted, but it might be exactly the one she needs.

Kings of Rittenhouse


Maya Hughes - 2018
    What's the worst that could happen? Long live the Kings...

The Rarity of Falling


Leeann M. Shane - 2019
    Not girls. But then again, Ava wasn’t girls. She was only one. One girl with eyes the color of sweetness and a personality that spun the same. My life was about school and my friends. Not boys. But then again, Bishop wasn’t just any boy. He was my solid ground. When forcing out smiles and hiding secrets is no longer possible, Bishop’s the unlikely force there to steady me. She wasn’t supposed to uproot my life. I wasn’t supposed to like it. He wasn’t supposed to be my strength. I wasn’t supposed to need any. It’s rare when opposites attract. He’s quiet and broody. I’m outgoing and bubbly. But when we come together, we fall. Over and over again. And nothing is ever the same… The Rarity of Falling is a sensitive and unputdownable coming of age love story by Leeann M. Shane.