Offside by M.G. Higgins

Title: Offside
Author: M.G. Higgins
Series: (Counterattack)
Format- ebook
Publisher- Darby Creek (Imprint of Lerner Publishing)
Published- January 1st, 2013
Pages- 116
Source- NetGalley

Between finishing late school projects and looking after her brothers and sister, Faith Patel barely has time to play soccer. And when she's at practice, surrounded by girls who can afford to play in club leagues, she doesn't even feel like part of the team. So when Coach Berg starts to give Faith extra attention, she feels . . . really special. It might be crazy, but suddenly Faith has a crush on her coach. Can she keep her head in the game? 

The situation gets worse after Faith's frenemy Caitlyn decides that Faith's getting special treatment. Will Caitlyn tell the rest of the team and make Faith into a total outcast?

Faith doesn't have the prospects the other girls in her soccer team have. She isn't very wealthy what wither her mom working night shifts to make ends meet without anyone to help her with her four children, well there is always Faith. Faith has been designated as her sibling's babysitter so her mom has some time to get some sleep between her shifts at the hospital. In exchange she gets to play soccer.

Faith is Faith Patel which means she's Indian which makes me oh so happy because hello! How many female Indian main characters have you met reading YA? The only problem is that I wish the book cover reflected her. Don't get me wrong, the girl on the book cover is very "I am woman. Hear me roar." but it would be nice if I can actually see Faith. Faith feels stressed out and like she's got the short end of the stick. Having to take care of your younger siblings - not fun. She's missed a lot of homework too but she doesn't even think she will be able to go to college so why bother?

Although Faith may sound annoyed that she has to take care of her siblings when something happens to one of them she shows a very caring side of her. Faith's very quiet so other on her soccer team may think she thinks she doesn't like them or maybe that she's even better than them. I don't know why the soccer team does this especially Caitlyn because have you never met a reserved person before? They are everywhere. You need to think about where that person's coming from. Caitlyn was her real trouble throughout the story. She would make snide remarks to her face. She's the one who got it in Faith's head that her coach, Coach Berg, liked her because he was letting her try out for another position on the team. When Faith started thinking that her coach liked her I couldn't help to laugh out loud. It was just so ridiculously funny. I mean this all in a good way. It's kind of sad that when someone was actually listening to her she felt that they must like her in a romantic way. It was like no one else had ever cared to bother to learn how she was feeling.

The book may have been just a little over one hundred pages but I really got a sense of who Faith is and what her story was telling me. I liked that it was just about a regular girl and like regular girls we tend to fall in love easily. I also liked it was about soccer which I played way back when. I wasn't good but it was nice to read about the action on the field. It made me reminisce. I don't know why but I think of this as a very "clean" book, one where girls can use to learn lessons from. I've read about the other Counterattack series and their summaries sound like that. I actually don't mind. They're very fun; light reads that I could see myself enjoying like I did with Offside.

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