An enemies-to-more fake dating romance set in the world of competitive tennis
Maisie Maxwell planned for a senior year of dazzling college scouts by playing her best tennis. Instead, her beloved tennis training academy is thrown into scandal when the academy founder and head coach, who happens to be her uncle, takes off to Tahiti with the school’s tuition money. Her classmates label her a traitor, but she commits to graduate from the school she loves.
Only her aim to lay low is thwarted by the school’s last-ditch hope to stay open, a new partnership with reality show The Academy.
Also not helping her stay-under-the-radar plan? A wayward forehand shot that nails transfer student Shane Wagner in the face on day one. Shane, obnoxiously gorgeous for starters, is the current number one nationally seeded player in junior boys’ tennis. Oops.
Everyone at school sees Shane as an outsider and fame-seeker. He’s just as much an outcast as Maisie. While reality show producers push for chaos, Shane and Maisie band together with their own idea: pretend to be together and control the narrative.
But the savvy head producer has her own agenda, and it’s not collegiate tennis scholarships. Shane and Maisie need to play hard to save the school before they’re outmatched.
Maisie planned on a relatively normal senior year, with working hard to gain a collage scholarship through her tennis. What she didn’t plan on was Six Lakes, her tennis academy, to fall to its knees when the founder stole the school’s tuition money. When Maisie returns to school for her senior year, most of the pupils have been pulled out of the school, and there are few people still there. The worst thing, though, is that she is outcast as a traitor. The founder, who stole all the money? He was Maisie’s uncle.
In an attempt to keep the school running, a partnership is set up with a reality show, The Academy. Maisie does not care to have her school, and her uncle’s scandal, the subject of a television show, but she doesn’t exactly have a choice. Everyone else seems thrilled at the idea of becoming stars, and getting their names and faces out into the world, where potential sports agents might find them. And with the knowledge that Six Lakes will host The Academy, two new students transfer, although only one really catches Maisie’s attention. And that may or may not be because he is gorgeous, and she accidentally sent a tennis ball flying at his face.
As much as Maisie has been cast aside because of her uncle, Shane Wagner, the transfer student, is thoroughly deemed an outsider and is excluded by most of the school. Somehow, though, Maisie keeps finding herself in his company, and she can’t deny that he isn’t exactly bad company. But with show producers creating drama where there isn’t any, how long can fake relationships remain fake?
Maisie is incredibly committed to her school. Even after her uncle ruined almost everything, she is not about to hide away, or go to a different school. Six Lakes is a place she is proud of, and she wants to make it a place others can be proud of once again. The only problem is the producers of The Academy don’t want to film tennis matches, or drills, or listen to the pupils ramble on about what tennis means to them. They want fights, relationships built and crumbling. They want televised high school drama, which doesn’t exist at Six Lakes. So, they manufacture it. After an unfortunate moment when the producer catches Maisie and Shane alone together, it becomes set that their ‘relationship’ will be important in the show. Maisie and Shane must pretend to be a couple.
The problem that occurs with the show, and camera being everywhere, all the time, is that you can never be entirely sure who is being genuine and who is putting on a front for the show. The students band together to try and control the direction of the show, by manufacturing their own drama, on their own terms, but things quickly turn sour, and gossip, even fake gossip, spreads quicker than wildfire. From the very beginning, with Maisie being unsure about the show, I didn’t think it was a good idea. And when the producers actually arrived? It was clear they had no interest at all in the school, or the welfare of the students. It was sickening the way they categories certain people based on whether or not viewers of the show might care about them, or whether or not they needed more diversity in the show. But even still, everyone had agreed to have the crew there, whether or not they realised it was a bad idea once they arrived.
Although Maisie and Shane’s relationship itself was mostly fake, it was still wonderful to read about them. They are both outsiders, but neither can see much fault in the other. Maisie wasn’t involved in her uncle’s scandal, and Shane might be at Six Lakes for the show, but he doesn’t have much of an ulterior motive, other than to get him name out there. Both would prefer to focus on tennis then the cameras, and in their similarities, they find themselves starting the like spending time with each other. And although the cameras are often on them, not all of their interactions are fake…
Although Six Lakes is a tennis academy, it almost seems like tennis takes a back burner to the show in this book. Tennis becomes a backdrop to the drama around The Academy, which perfectly sums up what the show is doing to the students. All anyone can talk about is The Academy, rather than tennis, and the fact that the show seems like more of an important topic for the book to focus on further proves what Maisie is feeling when the camera infiltrate her life. I thought this was a very clever way to show the reader exactly how she felt – I would have loved some more focus on tennis, but to the producers, there were more important things to focus on.
There is so much I want to say about this book, although this review would be very long if I mentioned it all. The Academy brings chaos and changes up relationships, whether creating or destroying them. This is an excellent book, which I read in a day, because I simply couldn’t put it down. If you want a drama filled book, this is most certainly the one for you.
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