Description
"Sports fans and reluctant readers alike will enjoy the detailed, fast-paced wrestling matches and blow-by-blow MMA fight scenes. ... Visceral and violent yet ultimately hopeful." - Kirkus Reviews
Sixteen-year-old star wrestler Rowan Harper's biggest fan is her father.
But he has ALS, and his symptoms are getting worse. Saving his life will cost more money than the family has, but Rowan finds a solution. Will she risk her chances at a scholarship by competing in a lucrative, but illegal, underground MMA fight?
Takedown is a high-intensity coming-of-age story about family illness and competitive combat, with lots of heart, hope, and headlocks.
Rowan Harper may be a wrestling phenomenon, but her biggest fights happen off the wrestling mat - the fight for her family, her love life, and her future.
About the Author
Ali Bryan is an award-winning writer. Her debut YA novel, The Hill, was longlisted for the 2021 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize. She is also a Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Arts Awards Emerging Artist recipient. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she currently lives on Treaty 7 Territory, in Calgary, Alberta, where she has a wrestling room in her garage and regularly gets choked out by her family.
Reviews
"In Takedown, Bryan tells the story of a rising high-school athlete struggling to balance her love of her sport and her family's struggles in a novel exploring responsibility, coming of age, sportsmanship, and mental health."
-- Valerie Tohom * Booklist *"Takedown is a great read on so many levels. Highly Recommended."
-- Sarah Wethered * CM: Canadian Review of Materials *"Told with empathy, humour and Bryan's sharp ear for dialogue, Takedown is an intense yet heartwarming story of a championship-level teenage wrestler who, as outside attention focuses on her athletic prowess, is also fighting for her family. The action scenes are accurate and visceral, but the novel's heart is in relationships-friends, family, mentors-and Rowan's struggle with grief."
-- Alberta ViewsAwards
Nominated for Forest of Reading - White Pine 2025 (Canada).
Book Information
ISBN 9781770867406
Author Ali Bryan
Format Paperback
Page Count 312
Imprint Cormorant Books,Canada
Publisher Cormorant Books,Canada
Weight(grams) 296g
Dimensions(mm) 203mm * 137mm * 21mm
