Her body has failed her. All Samantha has ever wanted to do is ballet. Now, on the cusp of entering the grueling professional arena, her body has changed and started developing curves. She's tried everything but the anxiety is crippling her. Her mother enrolls her at Perform at Your Peak, a summer treatment facility for teenaged artists and athletes struggling with anxiety. Can Sam learn to cope or will her anxiety undermine everything?

Books like HOW IT FEELS TO FLY usually fall into a love or hate category for me. I cringe when someone is embarrassed in a novel and too many incidents like that will easily send a book into the hate category for me. Thankfully, Kathryn Holmes avoids those pitfalls. We see inside Sam's world and mindset so well that even her embarrassing moments become uplifting as we see her struggles and determination to overcome.

HOW IT FEELS TO FLY is not a romance despite the fact that the blurb hints at it. In fact, I respect Kathryn Holmes far more for not taking the easy road with the storyline but instead offering readers a solid dose of realism. In fact, the resolutions of HOW IT FEELS TO FLY are what truly solidified my love for this book.

Kathryn Holmes does a marvelous job at tackling the issue of anxiety in teen performers! Holmes doesn't gloss over the control that anxiety has taken in these teenagers lives. Even better, Perform at Your Peak uses credible therapy techniques as an integral part of the character and plot development of the storyline. HOW IT FEELS TO FLY would be a great book for generating discussion with a youth book group or between parents and their teenagers. HOW IT FEELS TO FLY is easily recommended!