Rating: 3.5 stars

From the moment Kassandra Conner leaps from the diving board to the moment she hits the water, everything feels in control.

The rest of her life does not.

St. Lawrence Academy is supposed to have everything Kass’s old school didn’t: safe hallways, small classes, and, most important, a chance to dive. But since transferring, all Kass can think about is what’s missing. Like her best friend, Aleah, who’s starting to pull away. Or the comfortable life so many of her classmates enjoy while Kass’s family’s restaurant struggles to stay afloat. Even the excitement she always felt in the pool, now that she’s on the same team as Amber Moore—the best diver in the state, who’s barely said two words to her all year.

Kass feels like she’s drowning, until she meets a boy named Miles. He’s a diver, too—someone who searches through dumpsters in the posh side of town for things he can salvage or sell. Miles knows what it’s like to be boxed in by things you can’t control, and as Kass spends more and more time with him, she starts to wonder what would happen if she tried to break out of her own box—and what she might lose by doing so.

I received a digital copy of this book through the publisher on NetGalley for an honest review.

Dive is a short coming-of-age story from the perspective of a thirteen-year-old girl named Kass who’s going through a lot of changes in her life. This book does a wonderful job of portraying these changes through Kass’s perspective as she struggles to fit in at her new school on the diving team, while still staying in touch with her best friend, Aleah, and realizing the struggles her parents are facing in keeping the family restaurant afloat. Also tells her story in meeting Miles, a boy who also does a type of diving of his own: dumpster diving, and her realization that people have bigger problems to deal with than struggling to fit in at school and make friends.

The main themes in this book’s story are powerful, as Dive is a story teaches you not to judge others by their appearances, that sometimes change can be a wonderful thing, and that you don’t always know what other people are going through. You see these themes sprinkled throughout the story through the choices Kass makes when it comes to her friendship with Miles, and how, as the book goes on, she starts up a friendship with Amber, the girl she sees as the best diver on her team, who didn’t seem approachable to her at the beginning of the book. I enjoyed seeing Kass’s character develop in the story because of her interactions with Miles and how she was able to gain confidence to become friends with Amber and gain confidence to improve in diving.

I also enjoyed seeing her friendship with her best friend, Aleah. At the beginning of the story, Kass was worried about how attending St. Lawrence Academy would change her friendship with Aleah. She was worried that they would end up losing touch just because they weren’t talking as much since Kass attended her new school. But after the salsa night/sleepover at her house with Aleah and Amber, I felt like, if anything, her friendship with Aleah had improved. And I also felt like it showed that while some things in her life changed, her friendship with Aleah wasn’t something that would change just because she was at a different school.

However, while I enjoyed reading Dive, I have some criticisms of this book, too. I felt like there were times when I was taken out of the story because of Kass’s character. For a thirteen-year-old, her voice in the story didn’t come across as her being that age to me. Yes, she didn’t make the best choices in the story, and her actions made her come across as her age. But when it came to her awareness of her parents’ struggling financially and her being aware of others having bigger issues than her, I felt like she had more maturity than I was expecting of her character. Yes, I’m aware that kids have more awareness of things than people tend to give them credit for, but I do feel like her voice in this book has more awareness for someone her age than you’d expect, which made me sometimes forget that she was only thirteen, as her character easily could’ve been a couple of years older.

Speaking of age, though, while I enjoyed her friendship with Miles and enjoyed his character, I also found their friendship problematic. He’s older than her by several years, which becomes a problem in this book pretty early on. Especially because the circumstances Kass meets him from the outside looking in are perceived as suspicious. I know from her talking about him and their interactions in the story that he had no bad intentions when it came to their friendship. But she’s aware, too, that her choice in spending time with him is something the people closest to her wouldn’t be okay with, either, since anytime from the moment she meets him, she’s lied about where she’s going and who she’s hanging out with. This becomes especially apparent when she tells Aleah and Amber about him as well, because they have the reaction you’d expect: concerned for her well-being and worried that he’s taking advantage of her. I feel like having this age gap takes away from the overall message this book was conveying to its readers because their age difference becomes a main conflict in the story that causes problems. I feel like it took away from the main themes in the story by creating conflict with it. I wouldn’t see it as too much of an issue if Kass’s character hadn’t developed feelings for Miles, if Kass were closer in age to him, and if the other characters in the story (such as her friends and family) didn’t have an issue with it.

As a whole, though, I enjoyed reading Dive as I found Kass’s struggles relatable, and it was nice to see her character development throughout. I just wish the author had made her character a little bit older, as I feel like it would resolve a lot of the issues I had with this book. I do still recommend this book, though, especially to younger readers, as I feel like they’ll enjoy reading this book, and I feel like the themes they would be able to relate to. Dive was published on August 19, 2025, for those interested in reading this book.