Fast Pitch - Nic Stone

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Shenice Lockwood, captain of the Fulton Firebirds, is hyper-focused when she steps up to the plate. Nothing can stop her from leading her team to the U12 fast-pitch softball regional championship. But life has thrown some curveballs her way.

Strike one: As the sole team of all-brown faces on the field, Shenice and the Firebirds have to work twice as hard to prove that Black girls belong at bat.

Strike two: Shenice's focus gets shaken when her great-uncle Jack reveals that a career-ending - and family-name-ruining - crime may have been a setup...

Strike three: Broken focus means mistakes on the field. And Shenice's teammates are beginning to wonder if she's captain-qualified.

It's up to Shenice to discover the truth about her family's past - and fast - before secrets take the Firebirds out of the game forever."

Girls' sports, a team making history, a mystery long unsolved...this book has everything. Plus, Nic Stone? On my auto-read list. This book has been on my list for a very long time, and when it was nominated for the 2024 Grand Canyon Reader awards, that was the push I needed to finally read it. I thought Shenice was awesome - determined, focused, and tenacious - and loved how well her whole team and their coaches were developed. So often with a whole group of characters, they're kept kind of generic, so I really appreciated the effort taken to make each one of them unique and real. I also thought her family was lovely, and it was great how much her parents and brother were also incorporated into the story. They were so supportive and sweet with each other, I loved it.

The mystery element was pretty good, and I thought the balance between furthering the story of her softball journey and furthering her progress looking into what Jack had told her was solid. My one wish would have been that she started actually digging into what he told her a bit sooner so there would have been more time for the wrap-up at the end of the book. Still, though, excellent and compelling storytelling. Also, shout out to Nic Stone for telling such a well-developed and enjoyable story in fewer than two hundred pages! I'm looking forward to recommending this book to students.