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TodaysGirls.com #7
N2 Deep
Amber Thomas is a perfectionist. But she finds herself spread too thin when she tries out for the soccer team and becomes the school Webmaster at the same time. Pleasing people, succeeding, and accomplishing projects aren't firm bases for a healthy self-image or for a solid relationship with God. And utlimately Amber realizes that she must accept herself, and her limitations, because God has proven His love for her no matter what she does or doesn't do. It's grace.
- GenresYoung Adult
140 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2001
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August 11, 2024
N 2 Deep
Everyone keeps asking Amber if she’s trying out for the soccer team, and it’s starting to get on her nerves because she doesn’t really like soccer. More so it's like they're telling her she is. What’s on her mind if finding her Dad the perfect birthday present. It comes down to either a book about soccer (incidentally he loves soccer) or a big book of crossword puzzles. (She goes with the book). There’s also a position at school she’s applied for (being the Webmaster of the school’s website). Amber’s Dad disappointingly likes her brother Ryan’s present more (a hand-held soccer game). Alex stops by and somehow mistakenly puts it in her Dad’s mind that Amber is trying out for the team. He gets all excited and Amber changes her mind thinking it’s a sign from God that this is what she’s supposed to do to be closer to her Dad.
Her Dad even offers later that night to take her to the mall (to buy soccer stuff) and then he’ll call a friend of his (Eric) and his daughter (Sam) whose in Amber’s class and also on the team and they can all have dinner. The next day, Amber keeps checking the board but who got the Webmaster position isn’t there. Amber gets through soccer practice (it’s nothing like swim practice) all the while Ryan puts pressure on her. (Her brother is helping with the practices). While they’re out eating, Alex shows up and tells Amber she got the Webmaster position. Sam (who also went out for the position) looks disappointed by congratulates Amber. Amber offers that if she have ideas she should give them to her. She does and so does everyone else at school the next day until she’s drowning in em.
At practice, Amber shows promise when doing the cone drill, but is lousy at kicking. For the first time, she realizes she isn’t perfect at everything. Later that night, her Dad helps her perfect her kicks. She also has an idea to work on different sections of the site on different days. There’s a guy on the football team Zack who's cute, but he’s something of a leech. He’s always trying to keep Amber’s answers and he wants her to come to football practice to get some shots for the site. Maya wants her to go because Alex has a crush on someone and she won’t tell. For some reason, Morgan thinks it might be one of the football players. So they meet with the players and they all start voicing their ideas for their section of the site, making Amber late for practice. So she has to run laps. Again some of the stuff she catches on to quick (trapping the ball) but other stuff she’s not so great at (getting the ball past Ryan). Unlike Alex who manages to do just that, despite Ryan’s skill. The coach says there will be a scrimmage coming up with a mix of the seasoned players and new ones on teams. Sam is on Amber’s team and she tells her she might have lost the web job to her but she’s damn sure not losing the game because of her.
Surprisingly Amber’s dad takes the time to come to her scrimmage, but they lose the game because of a bad play from her. Amber is upset because she knows she’s embarrassed her Dad. She and her Dad practice together when he gets home. She asks God to make her good for her Dad’s sake. There’s this guy (Wes) who asks her out and for a minute she thinks he’s gonna ask her to the prom, but he really just wants to talk to her about getting some prom stuff on the site. He takes her out to dinner and blah blah blah he takes about promoting the prom on the site. He wants Amber to ask the principal if they can sell tickets for the prom on the internet. They have a good time talking but it’s clear he’s more interested in prom. Amber starts to feel burnt out and asks God for rest after the scripture given at church. She and Alex practice after church and Amber continues to practice, determined not to let kicking defeat her.
Amber doesn’t get as good a grade on a Spanish quiz and Sam “suggests” that she drop soccer or wait to get cut. Then the principal pressures her about having the site ready and gives her some more requests. Then a whole bunch of students come out of nowhere and start bombarding her throwing request at her. So she escapes and finds solace in the swimming pool and starts feeding herself positive affirmations.
Mr. Balwin works with her on the site and it starts to come together. Soccer doesn’t, but Amber continues to work hard at it and manipulates her brother to help her practice. The Coach gives them another scrimmage and even though Alex compliments her that she’s improving, Sam wants her off the time. On the day of the scrimmage, Amber prays for rain and she gets it. But the game isn’t called off interestingly. They lose by three points. The Coach says she’ll post who made the cut and the date of the first game will follow. After the game, Sam apologizes and gives her some recognition for what she *is* good at (swimming, being a webmaster). She tells her she did good despite the mistake of scoring a kick for the other team. Amber has to face her Dad, but he seems to understand and tells this story about a national team that did the same thing she had. She starts to apologize, but he just tells her to learn from her mistake.
Alex comes by to bring brownies but later she finds out from Maya that’s spying on the chat room that Alex is just crushing on Ryan. Amber gets mad and Maya says they should teach Alex a lesson. She can’t believe all the times Alex offered to help her that she really just wanted to be around her brother. Amber wants to use a bible verse to call her out, but Maya wants something more “vicious”. Amber has a plan to write Alex an anonymous note saying how much “they” loved the brownies and they want them to sit with *them* at lunch. Alex will think it’s Ryan and try to sit with him and his friends and he’ll freak out.
Amber and Morgan make the team. Alex embarrasses herself and goes over to sit with Ryan. The other guys tease him about having a girlfriend and he scoots away from her. As hard as Amber worked on the site, everyone has a gripe about it. Amber has a breakdown. Alex tries to confront Amber and they get into a fight. Amber says she just has been trying to get next to her brother. Alex throws it back at her and calls her a hypocrite. She says she’s only been trying to please her Dad and the other students and not God. Morgan tells Amber that Alex did like Ryan but she was also enjoying getting to know Amber. At the game, Amber apologizes to Alex. Amber is distracted and plays badly at first but then realizes she can’t please everybody They win the game Edgewood 9 Norton 7 Amber in the end gets a lot of emails congratulating her on the site with only a few complaints still. It ends with Zack calling to apologize and her getting off chat to talk to him,
My Thoughts: I do know what it’s like to what to please your father by doing something HES excited about but your not. Just last month, I found myself doing this EXACT same thing by going to a reunion that I did NOT wanna go to. I am the biggest introvert you ever wanna meet and the thought of all those people crowding me give me SO MUCH ANXIETY. But I think I was about as interested in soccer as Amber was and that made his book BORING to read. It took me a minute to even get to this one (or even find it) but I knew I had to finish the series. The Today’s Girl’s com books tend to be a little to on the *preachy* side for me. I couldn’t even keep my mind on reading it because this was one of those books where they thought it was interesting to include play-by-play descriptions of games so I made it easier on myself and just listened to it read it to me. Even *that* was a challenge. After a while of reading this, I was thinking SO WHAT YOU ARENT GOOD AT SOCCER! EVERYTHING ISNT FOR EVERYBODY! You don’t have to be Ryan. You don’t have to be your Dad. I wanna say (and this is from a hazy memory of hearing this) that my father was good at sports. I wanna say he was good at football. Didn’t mean when I was in high school I jumped up trying to join a girl’s sports team to make him proud of me. And really this was a crazy message. The father seemed not *just* to be interested in her playing soccer. He *did* pay attention what she was doing with the site. Then if he noticed she looked like a “fish out of water” why didn’t he just say “Umm pumpkin you know if your doing this to please me you don’t have to do that.” But no you CAN NOT please everyone. I use to try to do this with my family who are EXTREMELY social and if I let them they’ll drag me to event after event after event every single month. But I had to learn one day just to tell them NO I don’t feel like it. They don’t always like it. They don’t always understand it. Sometimes they even tease me and give me a hard time about it but I just had to learn to say “Oh well”. They’ll be ok. And really that’s what I think Amber DIDN’T learn.
Rating: 5 I must REALLY not have liked this book because I finished it in about a day so I could get it over with.
Everyone keeps asking Amber if she’s trying out for the soccer team, and it’s starting to get on her nerves because she doesn’t really like soccer. More so it's like they're telling her she is. What’s on her mind if finding her Dad the perfect birthday present. It comes down to either a book about soccer (incidentally he loves soccer) or a big book of crossword puzzles. (She goes with the book). There’s also a position at school she’s applied for (being the Webmaster of the school’s website). Amber’s Dad disappointingly likes her brother Ryan’s present more (a hand-held soccer game). Alex stops by and somehow mistakenly puts it in her Dad’s mind that Amber is trying out for the team. He gets all excited and Amber changes her mind thinking it’s a sign from God that this is what she’s supposed to do to be closer to her Dad.
Her Dad even offers later that night to take her to the mall (to buy soccer stuff) and then he’ll call a friend of his (Eric) and his daughter (Sam) whose in Amber’s class and also on the team and they can all have dinner. The next day, Amber keeps checking the board but who got the Webmaster position isn’t there. Amber gets through soccer practice (it’s nothing like swim practice) all the while Ryan puts pressure on her. (Her brother is helping with the practices). While they’re out eating, Alex shows up and tells Amber she got the Webmaster position. Sam (who also went out for the position) looks disappointed by congratulates Amber. Amber offers that if she have ideas she should give them to her. She does and so does everyone else at school the next day until she’s drowning in em.
At practice, Amber shows promise when doing the cone drill, but is lousy at kicking. For the first time, she realizes she isn’t perfect at everything. Later that night, her Dad helps her perfect her kicks. She also has an idea to work on different sections of the site on different days. There’s a guy on the football team Zack who's cute, but he’s something of a leech. He’s always trying to keep Amber’s answers and he wants her to come to football practice to get some shots for the site. Maya wants her to go because Alex has a crush on someone and she won’t tell. For some reason, Morgan thinks it might be one of the football players. So they meet with the players and they all start voicing their ideas for their section of the site, making Amber late for practice. So she has to run laps. Again some of the stuff she catches on to quick (trapping the ball) but other stuff she’s not so great at (getting the ball past Ryan). Unlike Alex who manages to do just that, despite Ryan’s skill. The coach says there will be a scrimmage coming up with a mix of the seasoned players and new ones on teams. Sam is on Amber’s team and she tells her she might have lost the web job to her but she’s damn sure not losing the game because of her.
Surprisingly Amber’s dad takes the time to come to her scrimmage, but they lose the game because of a bad play from her. Amber is upset because she knows she’s embarrassed her Dad. She and her Dad practice together when he gets home. She asks God to make her good for her Dad’s sake. There’s this guy (Wes) who asks her out and for a minute she thinks he’s gonna ask her to the prom, but he really just wants to talk to her about getting some prom stuff on the site. He takes her out to dinner and blah blah blah he takes about promoting the prom on the site. He wants Amber to ask the principal if they can sell tickets for the prom on the internet. They have a good time talking but it’s clear he’s more interested in prom. Amber starts to feel burnt out and asks God for rest after the scripture given at church. She and Alex practice after church and Amber continues to practice, determined not to let kicking defeat her.
Amber doesn’t get as good a grade on a Spanish quiz and Sam “suggests” that she drop soccer or wait to get cut. Then the principal pressures her about having the site ready and gives her some more requests. Then a whole bunch of students come out of nowhere and start bombarding her throwing request at her. So she escapes and finds solace in the swimming pool and starts feeding herself positive affirmations.
Mr. Balwin works with her on the site and it starts to come together. Soccer doesn’t, but Amber continues to work hard at it and manipulates her brother to help her practice. The Coach gives them another scrimmage and even though Alex compliments her that she’s improving, Sam wants her off the time. On the day of the scrimmage, Amber prays for rain and she gets it. But the game isn’t called off interestingly. They lose by three points. The Coach says she’ll post who made the cut and the date of the first game will follow. After the game, Sam apologizes and gives her some recognition for what she *is* good at (swimming, being a webmaster). She tells her she did good despite the mistake of scoring a kick for the other team. Amber has to face her Dad, but he seems to understand and tells this story about a national team that did the same thing she had. She starts to apologize, but he just tells her to learn from her mistake.
Alex comes by to bring brownies but later she finds out from Maya that’s spying on the chat room that Alex is just crushing on Ryan. Amber gets mad and Maya says they should teach Alex a lesson. She can’t believe all the times Alex offered to help her that she really just wanted to be around her brother. Amber wants to use a bible verse to call her out, but Maya wants something more “vicious”. Amber has a plan to write Alex an anonymous note saying how much “they” loved the brownies and they want them to sit with *them* at lunch. Alex will think it’s Ryan and try to sit with him and his friends and he’ll freak out.
Amber and Morgan make the team. Alex embarrasses herself and goes over to sit with Ryan. The other guys tease him about having a girlfriend and he scoots away from her. As hard as Amber worked on the site, everyone has a gripe about it. Amber has a breakdown. Alex tries to confront Amber and they get into a fight. Amber says she just has been trying to get next to her brother. Alex throws it back at her and calls her a hypocrite. She says she’s only been trying to please her Dad and the other students and not God. Morgan tells Amber that Alex did like Ryan but she was also enjoying getting to know Amber. At the game, Amber apologizes to Alex. Amber is distracted and plays badly at first but then realizes she can’t please everybody They win the game Edgewood 9 Norton 7 Amber in the end gets a lot of emails congratulating her on the site with only a few complaints still. It ends with Zack calling to apologize and her getting off chat to talk to him,
My Thoughts: I do know what it’s like to what to please your father by doing something HES excited about but your not. Just last month, I found myself doing this EXACT same thing by going to a reunion that I did NOT wanna go to. I am the biggest introvert you ever wanna meet and the thought of all those people crowding me give me SO MUCH ANXIETY. But I think I was about as interested in soccer as Amber was and that made his book BORING to read. It took me a minute to even get to this one (or even find it) but I knew I had to finish the series. The Today’s Girl’s com books tend to be a little to on the *preachy* side for me. I couldn’t even keep my mind on reading it because this was one of those books where they thought it was interesting to include play-by-play descriptions of games so I made it easier on myself and just listened to it read it to me. Even *that* was a challenge. After a while of reading this, I was thinking SO WHAT YOU ARENT GOOD AT SOCCER! EVERYTHING ISNT FOR EVERYBODY! You don’t have to be Ryan. You don’t have to be your Dad. I wanna say (and this is from a hazy memory of hearing this) that my father was good at sports. I wanna say he was good at football. Didn’t mean when I was in high school I jumped up trying to join a girl’s sports team to make him proud of me. And really this was a crazy message. The father seemed not *just* to be interested in her playing soccer. He *did* pay attention what she was doing with the site. Then if he noticed she looked like a “fish out of water” why didn’t he just say “Umm pumpkin you know if your doing this to please me you don’t have to do that.” But no you CAN NOT please everyone. I use to try to do this with my family who are EXTREMELY social and if I let them they’ll drag me to event after event after event every single month. But I had to learn one day just to tell them NO I don’t feel like it. They don’t always like it. They don’t always understand it. Sometimes they even tease me and give me a hard time about it but I just had to learn to say “Oh well”. They’ll be ok. And really that’s what I think Amber DIDN’T learn.
Rating: 5 I must REALLY not have liked this book because I finished it in about a day so I could get it over with.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 24, 2019
This is a mini ‘Books For Christian Girls’ review. It is not a full content review and will not receive one. These mini-reviews are years old and just for clarity on the rating the book received on Goodreads.
10/10/2015-
“Like quite a few series that have multiple authors as the written, this book did have the problem of characters seeming out of character compared to the previous book. It was a decent book, but I don't get why the girls felt like they were tricked by someone in their group and had to get even. This whole series definitely is out of date with the "welcome the school to the computer age" plot.”
*Main Content-
A bit of sarcasm; Mentions of barfing; a 'crummy', a 'sucker', a 'wimp', two 'kiss-up's, and four 'stupid's.
Maya is boy crazy over the football team guys; Mentions of boys, crushes, dates, & dating; a 'hottie' and two 'hot's.
10/10/2015-
“Like quite a few series that have multiple authors as the written, this book did have the problem of characters seeming out of character compared to the previous book. It was a decent book, but I don't get why the girls felt like they were tricked by someone in their group and had to get even. This whole series definitely is out of date with the "welcome the school to the computer age" plot.”
*Main Content-
A bit of sarcasm; Mentions of barfing; a 'crummy', a 'sucker', a 'wimp', two 'kiss-up's, and four 'stupid's.
Maya is boy crazy over the football team guys; Mentions of boys, crushes, dates, & dating; a 'hottie' and two 'hot's.
November 2, 2014
I can totally relate; blessedly accurrate; This book is so great. I too play soccer and struggle with keeping up with friends, family & pressures, school activies, hw, and just getting to relax. sometimes it does seem impossible, but
"if you have faith as small as a mustard seed then you can do anything; you can move mountains''
"if you have faith as small as a mustard seed then you can do anything; you can move mountains''
November 3, 2011
this book is alright but i still have to read some more to see if i really like the book
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews