Swim. Eat. Shower. School. Snack. Swim. Swim. Swim. Dinner. Homework. Bed. Repeat.All of Maggie’s focus and free time is spent swimming. She’s not only striving to earn scholarships—she’s training to qualify for the Olympics. It helps that her best friend, Levi, is also on the team, and cheers her on. But Levi’s already earned an Olympic tryout, so Maggie feels even more pressure to succeed. And … pressure to succeed. And it’s not until Maggie’s away on a college visit that she realizes how much of the “typical” high school experience she’s missed by being in the pool.
No one to shy away from a challenge, Maggie decides to squeeze the most out of her senior year. First up? Making out with a guy. And Levi could be the perfect candidate. After all, they already spend a lot of time together. But as Maggie slowly starts to uncover new feelings for Levi, how much is she willing to sacrifice in the water to win at love?
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I’ve seen Miranda Kenneally’s books around for a while now, but haven’t had the interest to pick one up since I’m not too keen on sports themes and romance together. But I’ve been on a YA contemporary romance phase lately and the premise sounds really exciting and I love friends to lovers stories sooo I clicked that request button. I’ll have you know that I’m definitely happy I got approved because Coming up for Air is such swoony summer read.
I dove into this book not knowing if I would enjoy it, and I loved EVERYTHING. From the writing, the friendships, the characters, the humor, the plot, the ending, the romance and all that FEELS…. I LOVED IT ALL. This book is just so huggable – it’s light, funny, and so stinking cute.
Levi and Maggie are so adorable together and such great characters. I loved the progression of their relationship from best friends to lovers which totally had me SWOONING and made me want my very own Levi. There’s plenty of steamy kisses, sexy moments and that undeniable push and pull that left me wanting more. I was definitely rooting for both of them on and off the swimming pool.
I also loved Maggie and her group of friends. Their amazing friendship was absolutely endearing and so fun to read. They’re such a great support system for one another both socially and professionally, especially since all of them are facing a lot pressure in their respective sports. I admired them for their dedication, determination and passion to be better athletes and succeed in their goals.
This book couldn’t have been more perfect. It’s sweet, funny, charming, and entertaining. The plot moved fairly quickly and was a bit predictable at times, but that didn’t take away from the heart of the story. I may not have been a fan of sports and romance together, but Kenneally’s amazing story telling definitely won me over. I can’t wait to read the other books in the series.
If you’re looking for a quick and adorable YA contemporary romance to help you unwind and beat the summer heat, look no more cause Coming Up for Air will surely drown you with so much cuteness and swoon worthy moments.
Well written, but definitely not for young teens due to PG-13 sexual content
Maggie and Levi have shared the same passion, competitive swimming, since childhood, and a very close friendship has formed between them because of it. At the start of the story, they are both 18 and nearing the end of their senior year in high school. Each has been accepted, with a full ride, to universities with prestigious swimming teams, Maggie in California and Levi in Texas. Because Maggie and Levi have been equally busy with school and their sport all these years, neither has ever dated, as they are unwilling to spare the time that a relationship requires. For the past several years, however, Levi has been a typical “manwhore,” easily bumping into endless, female swimmers at competitive tournaments, who are ready and willing to engage in spontaneous “hookups” with him, involving semi-public intimacies, up to and including oral sex and intercourse. Levi views these sexual encounters as nothing more than a convenient stress reliever, and he has never cared enough about his female partners’ opinions of these events to discuss it with Maggie. Nor has she cared enough to wonder about those young women’s feelings either.
Maggie is currently still a virgin, but she finds herself, more and more lately, feeling uncomfortable tension due to increasingly strong sexual “urges.” As a result, she has concluded that she, too, needs to find her own convenient, one-off, sequential, makeout partners to de-stress with. She’s not necessarily contemplating leaping right into Levi’s degree of casual promiscuity, but she certainly has no qualms about beginning the first steps that would inevitably lead her to fully follow in his footsteps. Unfortunately for her plan to launch herself into the murky waters of the sex-as-Xanax, partner-switching that apparently abounds in the teenage, competitive swim world, her first attempt is a ridiculous bust of a makeout session with a college athlete, at a drunken frat party during a visit to the university she will be attending in the coming fall. Afterwards, as she mentally reviews her own sexual performance as well as that of her partner, Maggie decides that all she needs, in order to, in the future, do a much more competent job at emulating Levi’s dissipated approach to sex, is a sex tutor. And who better for the job than the king of sexual flings himself, her good buddy, Levi?
It’s always difficult to find anything new and different in a “friends to lovers” romance, whether it is an adult, New Adult (NA), or Young Adult (YA) novel. Mainly because the motivation for the two previously platonic BFFs for not committing to romantic love with each other is always the same: “I don’t dare get involved with my best friend romantically, because if the romance doesn’t work out, I’ll lose my friend!” Given that, for generations now within Western culture, the most ideal mate has been considered to be a best friend whom one feels terrific sexual chemistry with, and given the fact that virtually no one in the real world has any chance of maintaining the huge amounts of friendship-bonding time, that is only possible in the free-wheeling teen years, once adult life, with its manifold responsibilities, takes over, this romantic conflict is, of course, nonsense on both counts.
There is an additional romance trope in this novel, which has been popular in adult romance, going back at least 40 years. It consists of one or both of the romantic protagonists, at the beginning of the book, kicking off their relationship by cold-bloodedly deciding to use each other for the selfish, instant gratification of uncommitted, temporary, meaningless sex. Given that this trope occurs in a romance novel, which must always include an HEA, that narcissistic beginning, of course, always magically evolves into committed love. This trope is not one that I personally enjoy, because it is so dehumanizing. And it feels very poorly motivated, in particular, in the case of a story that has the additional trope of “friends become lovers.” How, I ask myself, can anyone be so clueless as to believe that treating a BFF like a convenient, unpaid prostitute is the act of a loving friend?
It is important to mention that, in this novel, MK breaks one of the biggest taboos of YA in that this is one of the most erotic YA novels I’ve ever read. Yes, both of these protagonists are over 18 and consenting adults of the same age. But if MK wanted to write a novel with sexual content, it would have been less of a violation of genre expectations if she had written the story as NA rather than YA. But because this book has been marketed as YA, due to its sexual content, I would not personally recommend it for anyone under the age of 17. MK several times goes so far as to offer some below-the-belt action, on stage, which is definitely PG-13. In addition, many adult readers of YA romance (who are estimated to represent 60% of the readership of YA), purposely read YA romance instead of adult romance in order to avoid sex scenes. Such readers may be shocked at the degree of sexual content in this book. On the other hand, for adult readers who would be happy to experience a little teen-sex titillation in a YA novel, without having to endure the enormously graphic sex scenes that drag out endlessly in a huge percentage of NA and adult romance novels, this book will definitely fill the bill. Frequent sexual experimentation sessions between two extremely fit athletes who are both young, gorgeous, and equally ripped, who love and respect each other as friends and fellow elite athletes, and who discover they are madly sexually attracted, makes for some pretty hot make-out scenes.
This book is secondarily billed as a sports romance. For me personally, my favorite version of that subgenre of YA romance is when the hero and heroine are both elite athletes in the same sport, which is definitely the case here. I am not a fan of, and certainly not an expert on the sport of swimming. However, the swimming scenes were an enjoyable read for me, because they seem quite authentic.
Overall, this is not my favorite of MK’s YA novels, not by a long shot. However, she is such a polished writer, I mostly enjoyed the book in spite of my personal prejudices against the romance tropes described above.
I experienced this book both in Kindle format and as an Audible recording, utilizing the WhisperSync program through Amazon. The narrator does a good job with both male and female voices, of all ages, and an excellent job acting out all the parts.
I rate this book as follows:
Heroine: 3 stars
Hero: 3 stars
Subcharacters: 4 stars
Romance Plot: 3 stars
Elite Swimming Plot: 4 stars
Swimming Enemy Melodrama Plot: 3 stars
Writing: 4 stars
Audiobook Narration: 4 stars
Overall: 3.5 rounded to 4 stars
Apparently, I picked up the wrong “Coming Up For Air” book.
This one is about a 17 year old girl who has been so involved with being an elite swimmer, she feels like she has missed out on her High School years (aka: sex). How can she possibly go off to college so inexperienced? So, she turns to her best guy friend who has noncommittal sex all the time (who has time for a girlfriend?) to help “teach” her.
I’ve read many reviews that have said this is a great sex-positive book. I did’nt get that far before I threw it into the corner. I don’t understand how a book can be considered positive if it makes a teenage girl feel inexperienced and undervalued if nobody has taught her how to have sex. How is it positive when it glorifies the one-night stand culture to fulfill lustful needs AMONG TEENAGERS? (he can’t swim as well if he’s horny).
Seriously people, what is going on?? How is this positive? Because she propositions him?
As far as I’m aware, this is the last of the Hundred Oaks books. I’m kind of sad, I think I could have gone on reading about the students of Hundred Oaks High forever! I love how each book was about a different sport and a different strong-willed girl/couple who pursue their passions.
This book took on the world of swimming and relationships. In these teens lives, swimming takes priority over pretty much everything else, including dating. So, it’s no surprise when Maggie gets curious about what she’s missing by being so super focused.
Levi, on the other hand, is used to using girls to blow off steam and has no idea what it’s like to truly fall for someone. Hunter is caught up in a relationship that’s going nowhere. Georgia is trying to get over a relationship where she was betrayed.
Each character is trying to grow up, while focusing on their sport or future and figuring out how to balance their lives.
I really don’t know anything about this author or this series. And I’m assuming it’s in a series and I’m pretty sure this isn’t the first book but I don’t know. It’s not labeled on Goodreads and since that’s basically my Book Reviewer Bible, that’s what I go by.
If you’ve ever read any of my reviews, I make it very clear that I don’t usually pick up a book in the middle of the series. For the most part, I end up hating myself because I didn’t read those first books because even on the self proclaimed “stand-alone” novels, you do miss out on stuff and your reading experience is so much more rich when you get those first novels under your belt. Now, on very rare occasions, I do break that unwritten rule. Kinda like I did this time. But this time it was not intentional. And I’m kicking myself because I’m wondering if there was another book that came before this one. Am I missing out on important info? Pivotal plot points that would have changed my rating for this book? I have no clue. And I’m not going to search for that info either. It is what it is at this point and I can’t unring the ‘already read’ bell.
The story really skipped around and at times was in a super hurry to go where, I don’t know. That’s why I was wondering if I had missed something that was within the pages of a previous book. The characters were okay but I really know absolutely nothing about swimming except that Michael Phelps is super fast. FYI, that bit of info does not help you in this book. I played sports growing up, so I understood the dedication and how that impacted their character and was the driving force behind who the characters are within these pages.
I kind of enjoyed the chemistry between Maggie and Levi but it wasn’t anything that really stuck out to me. I didn’t really see this as a romance novel as others have classified it. I saw it more as a coming of age story. You experience a big turning point in the lives of these young people and get to watch as they make choices that will impact their future. So from that aspect, it was pretty interesting.
Just when I have overcome the skipping around and rushing of the plot, the epilogue comes around. And I didn’t understand that AT ALL. It was about characters that I didn’t even know! Sure, they mentioned Maggie and Levi but it was nothing like what I love about epilogues. I like getting a peek into the future of the characters that I’ve fallen in love with. I didn’t get that kind of satisfaction and it just cemented my initial feelings on this book. Not for me.
* I received this novel in exchange for an honest review *