• Age: 13 to 18
• Grade: 9 to 12
• Reading age: 13 to 18

Natalie’s passion is dance, and she’s looking forward to a summer of perfecting her technique at dance camp. Plus, she’s just turned fifteen – a momentous age that means she’s now officially a grown-up. But while her mom doesn’t seem to have got the memo, Kevin, her best friend Sasha’s older brother, has. Caught up with the excitement of Kevin’s attention, their relationship quickly becomes intimate and all-consuming. Over the summer, Natalie goes from being in love and lust with Kevin to realizing that he is not the guy she thought he was. The worst is that she may have lost her friendship with Sasha. When Natalie turns to her single mom for advice, she gets a shock. Her mom has fallen in love with a woman.

Losing her virginity, dealing with her new understanding of her mother, and trying to re-negotiate her friendships, Natalie turns to dancing as the only certain thing in a life full of questions. When a new teacher introduces her to modern dance, she gains confidence and a new sense of herself.

Girls will be drawn to Leap’s frank discussion of first love, first times – sex, drinking, break-ups – and the struggle between doing what feels right and doing things to please others.

A past winner of the Open Space Emerging Writers' Competition and a finalist in Paragraph's Short Fiction Contest, Jodi Lundgren has published in literary magazines such as Trivia, Paragraph and subTerrain, as well as in the anthology Beyond Bedlam. Her critical writing has appeared in Canadian Literature, Matrix and Essays on Canadian Writing. She is currently working on a novel for young adults.

Jodi Lundgren's profile page