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“A delightful, hilarious ode to the ‘80s.”
— Ms. magazine
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2021 ALEX AWARD WINNER
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In the great chasm that is 2020, this book was a huge bright spot for me . . . This was the shake-up and downright weird and nerdy book that put my reading back on track while quarantined.
— Cassie Gutman, Book Riot (“Best Books of 2020”)
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Psst. Hey you. Yeah, you. If you’re looking for a good time, call . . . your local bookstore and ask them to set aside a copy of Quan Barry’s We Ride Upon Sticks with your name on it. This novel, in which a high school field hockey team turns to the dark side (well, sort of) via a pledge penned in purple in an Emilio Estevez notebook (it’s the 80s), is almost too much fun to be allowed. I haven’t snickered so much reading a novel since I was a kid, but it’s not just slapstick, or the pure goofiness of the time period—the pleasure comes from Barry’s ludicrous, masterful sentences as much as it does from her ludicrous, over-the-top characters. Truly a delight in every way.
— Emily Temple, Lit Hub Senior Editor
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An absolute gift—a genuinely funny page turner with enough heart to win any championship.
— Jolie Myers, NPR“[A] delightful, pop culture-packed novel . . . In revealing the team members’ individual histories, the book becomes more than just a story of field hockey and witchcraft—it’s an energetic and original examination of young people wrestling with all the complicated parts of growing up.
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This is a novel by a poet and it rules . . . The prose style is neon and the laughs do not stop. I feel like the author wrote the entire book with an evil grin on her face.
— Molly Young, Vulture
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Packed with the ’80s flare of Stranger Things.
— Sabienna Bowman, PopSugar
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The book takes on the task of crafting compelling characters out of eleven protagonists, and succeeds in spades. [A] delightful narrative mosaic . . . Barry is a skilled storyteller and sentence artist who embraces irreverence where irreverence is due . . . As the story wind-sprints toward its deeply gratifying ending, one can’t help but grab a stick and hold on.
— Sarah Neilson, Minneapolis Star Tribune
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Spellbinding, wickedly fun . . . Each sentence fizzes like a just-opened bottle of New Coke.
— O, The Oprah Magazine
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Riotously entertaining . . . A witty, unruly ode to female empowerment and camaraderie
— Rob Thomas, The Capital Times
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A delightful, hilarious ode to the ’80s.
— Karla Strand, Ms. Magazine
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A perfect blend of aesthetic and narrative pleasure . . . It’s very funny and a little angry and a lot of fun.
— Maris Kreizman
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Touching, hilarious, and deeply satisfying . . . Readers will cheer [the team] on because what they're really doing is learning to be fully and authentically themselves.
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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Charming . . . Pat Benatar pounds throughout this novel, ‘Hit me with your best shot’ being applicable to a surprising number of situations, athletic, romantic, and supernatural . . . But Barry is . . . careful not to let nostalgia paper over the real ways in which things were worse in the 1980s, particularly for queer people and people of color.
— Annalisa Quinn, NPR.org
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Quan Barry writes of [her characters] lovingly, tracing their coming-of-age with sardonic wit and generous indulgence.
— Claire Hopley, The Washington Times
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A playful, nostalgic run through 1980s suburbia . . . Barry handles a large cast of characters nimbly and affectionately, allowing each to take a turn or two in the spotlight. Readers with fond, or even not so fond, memories of the 1980s are bound to be entertained.
— Publishers Weekly
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NPR’s “Best Books of 2020
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TIME “Must Read Books of 2020”
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