What it’s about: After getting kicked off the school’s basketball team for fighting, Mara longs to find another sport to play in order to prove to her coach that she can be a team player. Armed with a lifelong knowledge of football and the support of her best friend, Quinn, and her brother, Noah, Mara decides to join the football team alongside them, and it turns out, she’s a natural. Soon after Mara joins the team, four other girls join in solidarity, inspired by what they see as a political statement. Mara ends up being lumped in with these girls, none of whom can actually play football, and worst of all, she knows two of the new players well, with one being her crush, Valentina, and the other her nemesis, Carly. The new team dynamic will challenge Mara’s preconceived notions of gender, sexuality, and sports, forcing her to overcome her own internalized misogyny to become a better player and a better person.
How it compares: While the women in A League of Our Own deal with the pushback that comes from being in the first professional women’s baseball league, the women in this book deal with similar discrimination when they choose to play on their school’s previously all-male football team. Though it takes place over 70 years later, the obstacles faced by the girls in Like Other Girls prove that the need for feminism is as dire as ever, as is the need for female solidarity.
Get it from Bookshop or your local indie bookstore via Indiebound here.
