This novel wasn't what I expected. When I read the description on Netgalley, I saw it as a chance to read something different from what I usually read. It's not a fantasy, which I read a lot of, and it was about a girl who rode horses, and I thought that might be cool. This book is about so much more than that, though. First, it was written in blank verse, which was unexpected as that wasn't mentioned anywhere in the description. I initially balked a little, because I don't read a lot in verse, but I'm glad I persevered. Second, it's about a girl who rides horses in rodeo (which was not what I envisioned) and who is also anorexic.

The girl is named Rae. She lives with her father, who travels a lot for work. Her mother has passed away. There's also a new girl in town, who seems to be making friends with Rae's best friend and flirting a lot with Rae's boyfriend. As we listen to Rae, whose thoughts and story are fragmented and disjointed by the blank verse format, we see her need for control evolve into the controlling of her food and her obsession with becoming "lighter, leaner, faster" so she can go to the Rodeo Nationals. Since you are in Rae's head, you can  utterly understand her situation and where she is coming from. Everyone on the outside she's having problems with seems like the enemy. While you know that what she is doing isn't healthy, you see from her thoughts why she thinks it is and why she's doing it. I had strong feelings of empathy with Rae throughout, and I admit there were times I cried.

What I really appreciated about the book was that Rae's anorexia was real and authentic. It wasn't glamorized and (spoiler alert!) it wasn't magically fixed. I think the authenticity here comes from the author. This book is an own voices read. Catherine Alene's author note at the end explains that she has battled anorexia and is in recovery. I think this is a really important YA read for this reason. So many times In media, anorexia is struggled with and then recovered from, all in a short space of time. Here, Rae struggles. She isn't cured. As I read this book, I thought of a friend who has battled an eating disorder since middle school, and I felt like I knew her a little better after reading this.

The writing style here isn't for everyone, but I don't feel like this story could've been told another way. I think as a prose novel, the power of Rae's thoughts and obsessions as presented here would have been lost in longer sentences and exposition. As it is, this shows the struggle of a realistic character with anorexia and how the reactions of her friends and boyfriend and father either feed her negative thoughts or show her what needs to change. As her thoughts change over the course of the book, so do your perceptions, and therein lied the real power of the book for me. I highly recommend this if you are looking for own voices books about mental illness or invisible disabilities. I also highly recommend it for anyone struggling to understand anorexia and who wants a realistic take on what the thoughts are that feed it. I applaud Catherine Alene for having the courage to turn her own experiences into this novel.

Will you read it? Let me know in the comments!

Note: I received this book from Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

The Sky between You and Me by Catherine Alene is a novel written in verse begins with poems that evoke the richness of Rae's life. It is a story about a horse-loving girl who develops an eating disorder in order to become a better athlete. Unfortunately, this novel in verse focuses very little on the sport and throws all of its energy at repetitive phrasing and one-dimensional characters.

Rae is overtaken with her obsession with being lighter, leaner, faster, this evocative verse whittles down to bone and her need to be thin carves away her flesh, friends, and family.

This book is one where the characters stay with you. Especially Rae. Based on talking to others who have suffered from an eating disorder, Catherine's book gives an in depth glimpse into what it must be like to be all consumed by seeing the scale achieve all while going through the stresses of being a teenager. She created Rae to be incredibly relatable. I think we all can see a piece of ourselves in Rae.

I found this story to be honest, unflinching, and painfully beautiful, and I believe that The Sky Between You and Me offers a gift of understanding and hope to those who struggle with eating disorders and the ones who love them.

Thank you to NetGalley and SOURCEBOOKS Fire for the advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

This story works pretty well as a verse novel. I think because eating disorders are very personal and internal, the sort of story where a verse novel most shines. Alene does a great job of presenting characters as nuanced, even with the sparse storytelling of verse. That same format, though, limits the appeal somewhat. Still a compelling read.

I wish I had known when I requested this one that it was written in verse. I am kind of picky when it comes to those because there have only been a few that I have really enjoyed. I was really interested in the premise of a girl (Rae) who becomes anorexic because she wants to be lighter for her horseback championship. In some ways, this book was well done. I thought the portrayal of her eating disorder was very realistic. Rae starts out like any other girl. She is concerned about her weight yes, but she doesn't start out thinking that she needs to lose so much weight and she is going to stop eating to do it. It's just about losing five more pounds. But then she decides to lose just five more . . . and so on and so on. She constantly obsesses about food and she feels less hungry the longer she goes without food. Rae constantly compares herself herself to the new girl in town, Kierra. It's annoying, but I get it. I loved the family stuff. Rae's mom was a horseback rider and she died years ago, but she is very close to her father.

I was not a fan of the people in Rae's life. Everyone notices Rae's eating disorder, but no one seems to want to do anything about it. Her best friend, Asia, seemed more annoyed about Rae not eating than concerned. She would call out Rae for not eating in front of everyone and she would just dismiss Rae when she wouldn't eat like Asia wanted her to. And Rae's boyfriend was no better. Cody seemed supportive enough at the beginning, but he continues spending time with Kierra, knowing that it bugs Rae. And when Rae loses all that weight, does he seem concerned? Not really. He makes a comment about how no one likes to hug a skeleton. Really? Crazy. Part of the problem I had with this book was the boy drama. I wanted more about the eating disorder and also more about the horseback rising championships. The horseback riding was kind of a subplot and there wasn't as much written about the competition aspect as I would have liked. And I hated that Rae spent so much of the book mad at Kierra for nothing and worried about whether she was stealing her best friend and her boyfriend. It kind of overshadowed the eating disorder part.

My other problem was with the writing. Honestly, the narrative was just not that good. It didn't even seem like verse so much as a regular narrative that was formatted differently. Maybe the unique formatting was an attempt to add more depth to the story, but I thought it fell flat. I just couldn't connect emotionally to the characters. It was an okay story, but the combination of the boy drama and the narrative just disappointed me.

Once you get past 15% you get use to the book being written in verse... as this is not something I am use to. I found it easy to keep up and follow along. Eating disorders that involve teenagers are a serious subject and I think the author covered it well. Rae's family and friends should have called her out on it a little bit more often and sooner. The barrel racing and horse aspect was a nice touch. Over all not a bad read!

My thanks to NetGalley, the author and publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I don't normally read straight young adult fiction, in part because I don't feel like the target audience and can't connect with the stories as much. That said, I requested this book because the idea of a competitive equestrian battling an eating disorder seemed out of the box and relatively unique. The story wasn't what I was expecting and the writing style definitely wasn't for me, but it was an interesting read for sure.

First, and maybe most importantly for some people, this is a novel written in verse. Nowhere in the description does it say that, so it's important to note up front. I personally do not like any books written in verse and I try to avoid them (including collections of poetry). I stuck with this because I felt some obligation to at least try it and get out of my comfort zone a little. I probably won't be reading more novels in verse anytime soon, but I can see why the author thought it worked here and why some people might appreciate this style, especially for this sort of story.

Second, the story did disappoint me. From the description, I had expected more of a balance between the main character Rae's equestrian activities and her eating disorder, but it was really focused on the latter. Plus, I didn't realize that rodeos were her form of competition, and I'm not a huge fan of those. As far as the eating disorder goes, though, I thought it was handled really well. It's not glamorized, which is important especially in a young adult book.

I think the most successful part of this book for me really was the narrator's reactions to her own eating disorder, which is one reason why writing in verse may have worked here. The author does mention in a note that she struggled with an eating disorder as a young woman, and so I got the feeling that the character's reactions and thoughts were genuine, something that we usually don't see as much with this sort of topic. That's what kept me reading, even when the story didn't follow the path I anticipated.

So, this book was basically nothing like what I expected, but it kind of turned out okay in the end. It's not so much about horses and it's definitely a unique writing style, but if you're interested in a young adult novel about an eating disorder, it's a good choice. I gave it three stars.

*ARC from Sourcebooks Fire via NetGalley

I'm not feeling this book at all. I thought that I would like it but sadly I'm not feeling it at all.

I was really excited to read a book with this subject matter. When I opened my Kindle I thought there was just something wrong with the formatting. Then I realized it was on purpose.
I can not do an entire book written in this style. Because this is a personal hangup, and I'm sure there are many people that can and will enjoy this book, I stopped at 15%.
I can't rate this book, as I didn't actually finish it.

I was so excited to read this because one, I love books written in verse, and two, I knew it was going to be covering an important topic. Now that I’ve read it, I’m left with a lot of mixed feelings. There were so many times where I was beyond frustrated. I nearly marked this as DNF twice. However, it portrayed the topic very realistically. I’ll admit that I don’t have very much knowledge when it comes to eating disorders but you could tell that this author knew what she was writing about. The frustrating part? For a good chunk of the book other things overshadowed that important topic.

The Sky Between You and Me is about a girl named Rae who is a competitive horseback rider. She and her friends compete in their town’s rodeo every year and this year Rae is determined to win at Nationals no matter what. While in the midst of struggling with how much she misses her mom (who passed away before the beginning of the book), her eventual obsession with winning, and the introduction of a new girl who seems perfect in every way that she isn’t, Rae begins to develop an eating disorder.

Sound pretty straight forward? It wasn’t. In the beginning, when we’re first introduced to the new girl, Kierra, an accident happens that leads to Rae not liking Kierra at all. By accident, I mean that Kierra had no control over what happened. The dislike that said accident fosters leads to a lot of friendship and boy drama that takes up about 75% of the book and at times completely overshadowed what I knew the author was trying to accomplish.

There was also this one part with Rae and her group of friends where her best friend, Asia, actually calls her out on not eating in front of everyone. The words that were spoken and the manner in which it happened had my jaw dropping. I couldn’t believe it. What “best friend” does that? Toward the end, the author tries to give Asia some redemption but I couldn’t get past that.

And don’t even get me started on her boyfriend, Cody. That is a whole other can of worms that I don’t even have the energy to open. He also made an offhanded comment that I really didn’t like. In the beginning I liked him but by the end I couldn’t stand him.

So, yeah, I felt that most of this book lacked in the friendship department. It had its moments but they were far and few between.

All of that aside, there were aspects of this book that made me glad that I choose to stick with it.

The portrayal of a family struggling with loss – Rae and her dad are both struggling with the loss of a wife and mother. The way Catherine Alene wove this family dynamic was so honest and heartbreaking. Books written is verse require very little in the realm of words but it didn’t even matter because I could feel the grief they were going through and it broke my heart. I also loved the relationship Rae and her dad had. Sure, it was a bit strained at times but they had a great father/daughter relationship.

The way in which Catherine Alene wrote Rae’s growing struggles as she develops an eating disorder was so raw and realistic. I can’t even count the number of times that I sat there reading with tears in my eyes because all I wanted was for someone to notice how much Rae was struggling. Not point it out in a negative fashion like her friend did but notice so that they could get her the help she needed. You could tell that the author knew firsthand what she was portraying in Rae. Which is something that she actually goes into detail about in her author’s note.

Also, the ending. I won’t go into any detail but it wasn’t an ending wrapped up in pretty bows. It was realistic and I enjoyed that fact.

Is this a book that I would recommend to everyone? If you can push past everything that frustrated me then I say go for it because it does depict an important topic very well. However, a lot of the bad did overshadow the good and if you're a reader who does get easily frustrated, like me, then you may want to pass on it.

DNF at 25%

Very confusing beginning to the book. Due to this, I found it hard to read as I could not find myself engaged in the story. Not for me, unfortunately.

This book is written in verse which for me was a nice change. At times it was a bit confusing but it was still easy to follow. Also, the verse style makes it a fast read. Rae wants to win the Rodeo Championship but to get her times faster she thinks she needs to lose weight. What ensues is hard to read; Rae goes to the extreme and begins starving herself. Her relationships suffer which causes her to spiral down more. Her family, boyfriend, and best friend step in to help try and save her life. This is a great story of perseverance and love and important for teens and adults to read to understand this horrible disease.