• Age: 14 to 18
• Grade: 9 to 12
• Reading age: 13 to 18

“Sports fans and reluctant readers alike will enjoy the detailed, fast-paced wrestling matches and blow-by-blow MMA fight scenes. … Visceral and violent yet ultimately hopeful.” — Kirkus Reviews

Sixteen-year-old star wrestler Rowan Harper’s biggest fan is her father.

But he has ALS, and his symptoms are getting worse. Saving his life will cost more money than the family has, but Rowan finds a solution. Will she risk her chances at a scholarship by competing in a lucrative, but illegal, underground MMA fight?

Takedown is a high-intensity coming-of-age story about family illness and competitive combat, with lots of heart, hope, and headlocks.

Ali Bryan is a personal trainer who grew up in Halifax and attended high school in Sackville, New Brunswick. She is a graduate of St. Mary's University and completed a graduate certificate in creative writing from the Humber School for Writers under the tutelage of Paul Quarrington. She was a finalist in the 2010 CBC Canada Writes literary contest for her essay "Asshole Homemaker" and a bronze medalist in the 2012 Canada Writes literary triathlon. Ali lives in Calgary with her husband and three children. Her real name is Alexandra. Roost is her first novel.

Ali Bryan's profile page

• Nominated, Forest of Reading – White Pine

“Sports fans and reluctant readers alike will enjoy the detailed, fast-paced wrestling matches and blow-by-blow MMA fight scenes. … Visceral and violent yet ultimately hopeful.”

Kirkus Reviews

“A brave and riveting story about a teen wrestler fighting for her future, family and relationship. The writing is pitch perfect, captivating and emotional, giving insight into the intensity of wrestling, being a teen and fighting for family. It's a page turner with action that will make your heart race!”

Lorna Schultz Nicholson, author of When You Least Expect It

“In Takedown, Bryan tells the story of a rising high-school athlete struggling to balance her love of her sport and her family's struggles in a novel exploring responsibility, coming of age, sportsmanship, and mental health.”

Booklist

“With stunning accuracy and endless empathy, Bryan captures the delicate, gritty and complex reality of being both a wrestler and a teenager. Takedown is everything I love in a novel: heartbreaking, intense, romantic and powerful, and the writing is superb. A gut-punch of a novel.”

Sarah Everett, 2023 Winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for Young People's Literature

“Bryan’s Takedown carefully balances dualities: ferocity and vulnerability, familiarity and passion, life and impending losses. Bryan has written a strong female protagonist … while never forgetting that Rowan is also a girl trying to make it through her adolescence and the day-to-day of high school.”

Paul Coccia, author of I Got You Babe

“Takedown is a great read on so many levels. Highly Recommended.”

CM: Canadian Review of Materials

“Told with empathy, humour and Bryan’s sharp ear for dialogue, Takedown is an intense yet heartwarming story of a championship-level teenage wrestler who, as outside attention focuses on her athletic prowess, is also fighting for her family. The action scenes are accurate and visceral, but the novel’s heart is in relationships—friends, family, mentors—and Rowan’s struggle with grief.”

Alberta Views