Girls Can't Hit

The back of this book promises feminism, funny, boxing, and Saxons, but unfortunately you'll only find two of those things here.

Girls Can't Hit follows 16 year old Fleur, who whilst studying during her first year of A-Levels happens upon a poster advertising boxing at a local gym. With the boxing classes being segregated by gender, Fleur and her friend go to the gym in protest. From then, Fleur ends up signing up in order to prove a point and discovers that she actually really enjoys boxing.

There is a good story here, somewhere, but it's hidden under some elements that I personally felt could have been improved upon. Interspersed throughout are Saxon and Norman battle reenactments which don't quite land amongst the boxing practices and the main storyline. It was quite confusing as to why a bunch of teenagers were so invested and it made it hard for me to get into.

The romances featured in this book also all fell flat for me. The main relationship between Fleur and her 19 year old boyfriend came across as somewhat problematic. This is a man who is training for the navy and has already finished with school and college. It is also revealed that they got together whilst Fleur was in high school and the age difference did not sit right with me. The difference in their maturity levels and their interactions initially made me think that Fleur was a lot younger than 16 and so I was not invested in their relationship at all. For a long term relationship, we never really saw them express any love for each other and so their date nights and interactions took away from other bits of the book that were good.

For the first 50 or so pages the tone of the book seemed off to me and I initially thought it was a middle grade book, but this improved somewhat and felt more like a teen was the MC as the narrative was further established.

There are a lot of misogynistic jokes in this book as well that aren't adequately called out by the so called feminists in this book. Honestly it just made me roll my eyes but I'm aware that there are people like this out in the world so this did feel somewhat realistic.

A girl exploring what she likes and trying to prove herself in a male dominated space actually worked for me, but at times it felt so surface level that I just wish we had more. I came away from the book not entirely knowing who Fleur was, just that she liked to box.

Overall I think the plot of the book needed tightening a bit more and the MC having a little more depth for this to fully work for me, but I would be interested to see what current works by this author are like.