Definitely felt so many comparisons to Montesanti's story - loved reading about another person who grew up Catholic and queer. I also loved learning about the Derby world and getting to understand the process, the team, and how healing it can be.

I love Memoirs! I love LGBTQIA++ reads! What is better than bringing them together?

Finding a good strong storyteller is key, and Gabe Montesanti has provided us with just that, a beautiful, strong story we can find ourselves viewing alongside as we are reading. I couldn't find anything to dislike about this read. It was beautiful in all aspects.

Five stars, +++

Thank you so much to NetGalley for the ARC in return for an honest review.

BRACE FOR IMPACT in a super interesting, heartfelt, and fun memoir about a queer woman who finds a community in roller derby! It’s so cool to read a true story about a sport I know nothing about but have always been vaguely interested in. Gabe also goes into her personal life, reliving starting graduate school and moving to a new city with her girlfriend, and her strained relationship with her religious family. The stuff about her relationship with her Mom is often hard to swallow, but it certainly feeds into her need for a sense of belonging, and a sport that is inclusive and feeing.

I quite enjoyed this memoir. It has everything that I look for in a memoir and it is a voice that is needed now.

I appreciated the author’s raw honesty, exposing her fears, doubts and insecurities. Her mother was emotionally abusive and instilled in the author distorted and unhealthy ideas regarding weight, body image, medical treatment, self-worth, competition, etc. She also could not tolerate Gabe being a lesbian. She believed that she, and by extension her daughter, was superior to "those people." And of course, the relationship between Gabe and her girlfriend Kelly would never last because "those people" are not capable of committed relationships. Gabe and Kelly would disprove this fallacious assumption.

The story centers around Gabe joining a women's roller derby team in St. Louis -- her introduction to the sport and the women involved, the rookie training, her quest to be chosen for a team, what the matches are like, and the friendship and comradery of the women on the team. Both the team and the world of roller derby is open and accepting of the LGBTQ community, as well as various body types and sizes, which are things Gabe has not experienced in the past. She revels in finding a community where she and Kelly are accepting for who they are. However, even as she finds acceptance and friendship in the roller derby community, she struggles to believe that the acceptance is genuine and that she does not have to conform to a certain body image or performance level. A traumatic leg fracture proves to be a turning point, as her newfound friends stick with her and support her, and this is contrasted strongly by the behavior of her mother when she comes to visit Gabe following her injury.

Deeply obsessed with this book. Healed a part of me from my past that I didn't know needed that. I ended up purchasing the audiobook and giving it a read that way and I highly recommend it. Will be in my 2023 favorites round up for sure.

A heartfelt, honest and sometimes funny look at the trauma we carry, and try to skate around. An interesting coming of age story filled with queer characters, interesting anecdotes and honesty.

I am usually not a big memoir fan, but I actually really enjoyed this one.

Gabe uses her experiences with roller derby to dive into her struggles with her mom, her body, and her deep need to be physically active and competitive. I loved reading about the roller derby, and Gabe’s experiences with her family and friends were told in a funny yet impactful way. This one read like fiction to me, which is a compliment!

This book broke my heart and put it back together again multiple times. I'm obsessed with roller derby so I went into this book almost exclusively based on seeing that would be involved. Once I learned that queerness, EDs, and difficult mothers were also involved, I realized how fortuitous it was that I picked it. This was a difficult read at times, especially when parts hit too close to home, but the writing was so strong and the story so compelling that I kept coming back. I am so glad that Montesanti was able to find a supportive community and learn how strong she is and move beyond her mother's criticism and judgement. I think this is an important queer memoir and I am excited to see what the author does next.

The Roller Derby aspect is one of the reasons I was drawn to reading this one. Also as a member of the LGBTQ+ community this one made my heart happy.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the advanced reader copy. This is my honest review

This book was very relatable to me as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. I really enjoyed it, though I did have a bit of a difficult time getting into it at first.

I tried twice to read this book and did not manage to make it past chapter three either time. I wish the author well. The writing style and overall vibes were simply not for me. You will probably enjoy it if you care about roller derby, though.

When I was offered a review copy of this book, I wasn't sure if I was going to accept it. While I have friends who are involved in the roller derby world, it's not a sport that I'm very familiar with. However, I had recently read a horror novella that took place in a derby setting, so I decided to dip into that world again (It's called Misconduct, for anyone interested.)

Having been a high level athlete for most of my life, I really connected with Gabe's drive to be the best. We have opposite trajectories, with my childhood being full of team sports and transitioning into more solo competition as an adult, but I know that competitive urge. I don't know how to be chill. I don't know how to handle down time, or determining how serious an injury is. (As a contact sport athlete I played with a few broken bones. Seriously, it's dumb I know it, but it is what it is.)

While my relationship with my mother hasn't been as abusive as Gabe's, my parents also always wanted me to be the best. I'd get told often how terribly I played if I didn't have the most points on the team, or missed a tackle, or had a bad pass, etc. Every day I have to work on dealing with my feelings of inadequacy. I hurt for her, and I hurt for my younger self too in those passages.

For me the book just felt a little unbalanced. Ninety percent of the book is her first few months of joining the derby community, and the struggle to just become competent in the sport. The friendships, the names, the environment. I really wanted more talk about matches and rivals, and her rise to becoming, assumedly, a higher level player. At the end of the book I was thrilled with her acceptance of who she is. Getting out of her mothers thrall. The progression of her romantic and platonic relationships, but I ultimately don' t know who she is within her sport.

We get her entry, and then we skip ahead to her joining the All Stars four years later and the pandemic happens. I'm sure there are some incredible matches to recount in the middle, of her developing into a high tier player. Is she? I genuinely don't know. Googling her after it looks like she became a Jammer? Not mentioned in her book at all.

Overall, I did enjoy reading this, but I am left wanting more of the four missing years.

Thank you so much to Random House and The Dial Press for an arc of this title.

What a great memoir following Gabe as she grew up in a Midwestern town never feeling truly comfortable in her own skin. Headed to college she’s determined to find her own way and joins a roller derby league. After a major injury she is forced to actually stay still and come to terms with her life. This is a story about figuring out how to be at peace with yourself.
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Thank you dial and netgalley for an ad advanced copy in exchange for a honest review.

Brace For Impact is a stunning memoir that highlights the struggles of being queer, dealing with family trauma, and the overwhelming relief of finding a found family.

This story is told from the POV of a young woman, Gabe, who is working hard to figure out her life. She is living with her girlfriend in a new city, attending a graduate program. She decides to pick up roller derby to get some exercise but mainly to be part of a team. Once I learned she was a swimmer with a perfectionist mother who pushed her past her physical limits, I could picture her clearly along with countless other young women I’ve known who’ve been brought up thinking they needed to be perfect to be enough. She is new to derby, but her athleticism and tenaciousness pays off and she is welcomed into the group. Through derby and the support of her girlfriend she finds her own strength to live her own life. This is a really inspiring, entertaining, and well-written story. ARC from NetGalley and Random House.

Raised with an excessively critical mother and a loving but distant father, Gabe was extremely sensitive to criticism, having never been good enough at anything to satisfy her mother, though she had been a highly ranked competitive swimmer in high school and college. Falling in love with a teammate and coming out as queer, then moving to St. Louis to attend graduate school with her girlfriend Kelly, gave Gabe’s mother plenty of things to criticize. Gabe’s quest for perfection left her feeling inadequate, knowing she could never measure up to her mother’s standards and she remained in limbo as she tried to find her own voice.

Joining a local roller derby league, with its over-the-top image and intense physicality, seemed a good fit, and although Gabe was terrified, she entered their “Fresh Meat” training course and did well enough to be drafted onto a team. As Gabe’s skill increased, so did her confidence and she seemed to finally be discovering herself until she fell during a practice and broke her leg. It was a bad break, and Kelly called Gabe’s mother, who immediately took over with what she wanted, not what was best for Gabe, and Gabe initially went along with her mother’s direction. Soon, though, Kelly prevailed and Gabe received the interventions she needed to properly heal.

Gabe’s story was told with honesty and authenticity, balancing her fear and uncertainty with her strength and determination to make significant changes to her life. I remember watching roller derby on a little black-and-white TV, when we lived in the San Francisco Bay Area in the mid-1960s, and I was always fascinated by the women and their skill on the rink. I truly enjoyed Gabe’s journey and evolution into a confident woman who seems to be quite comfortable in the person she has become.

If you liked I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy and you'd like to read more about horrible mothers with undiagnosed Cluster B personality disorders, or you like roller derby, queer love stories, the Midwest, medical mishaps, or chosen-family tales--or any combination of the above--this is the book for you, my friend. Join Gabe as she navigates everything I just mentioned with humor and an eye for detail. She has some very awesome people in her life, with one painful exception. TW for child abuse and eating disorders.

Thanks to the author, publishers, and NetGalley for giving me a temporary digital ARC in exchange for my honest review. Opinions are my own.

I loved this book! Why? It drew me in and I couldn't put the book down!

This memoir talks about the need to be something more after living a life of feeling like you are never enough. Gabe is looking for something that will empower her but at the same time, be competitive. She finds a roller derby league looking for new skaters and decides to give it a try. She doesn't skate well to begin with but pushes herself to become better, eventually making it on a team. Soon after, she injures herself and wonders if she will ever be able to go back to something she fell in love with and made her feel whole for once in her life.


Thanks to Random House and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Montesanti's memoir of a dysfunctional childhood, a difficult experience coming out of the closet and living an authentic LGBTQ life, and pursuing roller derby is well-written and compelling. For me, some of the portions of the book that focused entirely on roller derby dragged as I don't have much interest in the sport, though I enjoyed reading about her relationships with her teammates. The book alternates between past and present experiences, and it was her relationship with her mother that I found most interesting, and wanted to read more of. These sections are enmeshed with her experience as a lesbian; her mother (strangely) was an advocate for LGBTQ rights but thought her own daughter was "better than that." All in all, this is a good read but will be of greater interest to roller derby fans/players.