The Misdirection of Fault Lines

By: Anna Gracia

Narrated by: Shannon Tyo, Jen Zhao, Louisa Zhu, Sean Pratt

Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants goes to the French Open in an emotionally honest and openhearted novel for fans of Yamile Saied Méndez and Mary HK Choi.

Three teen girls compete at an elite tennis tournament for a shot at their dreams—if only they knew what their dreams were.

Alice is on her own for the first time. She has no coach. No friends. Not even clothes that meet the Bastille Invitational’s strict dress code. There’s only the steady drumbeat of guilt inside—pressure to make the tournament’s costly expense “worth it” in the wake of Ba’s unexpected passing. But will a win on court justify the price she paid to get here?

Violetta is Bastille’s darling: social media influencer, coach’s pet, and daughter of a former tennis star who fell from grace. Bastille is her chance to reclaim the future her mother gave up to raise her. But is that what she wants for herself?

Leylah hasn’t competed in two years, thanks to a back-stabbing ex-friend. Bastille is her last chance to prove she’s ready for a life of professional tennis. But will her fixation on past wrongs keep her from reclaiming her rightful place at the top?. One week at the elite Bastille Invitational tennis tournament will decide their futures. If only the competition between them stayed on the court.

The Misdirection of Fault Lines is an incisive coming-of-age story, infused with wit and wisdom, about three Asian American teen girls trying to find their ways forward, backward, and in some cases, back to each other again. Anna Gracia, acclaimed author of Boys I Know, delivers with a refreshingly true-to-life teen voice that perfectly captures the messiness of adolescence and the pressures of expectation.

Disappointing

I prefer to avoid books that are pseudo PSAs. Many writers pen gorgeous stories that encompass the same issues Anna Garcia addresses in THE MISDIRECTION OF FAULT LINES. Instead of incorporating racism into the story, Garcia has the characters tell the reader all about in dialogue. Characters lecture each other about the dangers of eating disorders sounding more like a page from Wikipedia than how teens would talk. These frequent PSAs would have been better if shown rather than told.

I love women’s sports stories and was disappointed that was such a small part of the book. The “bad” characters were stereotypical cardboard characters straight out of central casting without nuance. The bones of the story were interesting. I wish Garcia had executed them better.

The voices of different narrators in the audiobook all sounded similar and I could never distinguish between the voices. None of the readers did adequate male voices, though they spoke British and different Asian accents quite well.