Free fall summer by Tracy Barrett

Free fall summer, available in stores April 3, 2018
Clancy's mother died in a skydiving accident when Clancy was six years old. Now 16, Clancy's overprotective father lets her work at his skydiving company, the same place where her mother died a decade earlier, so that he can keep a watchful eye on his daughter. Clancy packs parachutes for other skydivers, but her dad won't give her permission to jump from a perfectly good airplane. He doesn't even want Clancy to drive herself anywhere, or ride in a car with her best friend Julia. Clancy meets an 18 year old college freshman Denny from Denver, who has arrived to film a skydiving video for his best friend who is in the hospital back in Colorado.
Thanks to a simple misunderstanding, Denny assumes Clancy is already in college, and she intentionally lets him keep thinking that she is older. Nor does Clancy mention her lifeguard boyfriend Theo. Clancy is starting to feel pressed in her relationship with Theo, who by all accounts should be a knight-in-shining armour but has lately been driving Clancy a little crazy by making all her decisions for her. Then Theo gets a last minute job at a summer camp in Idaho, far away from Clancy's summer skydiving work in rural Missouri, and Clancy sees a chance at finding herself.
Author Tracy Barrett does a good job of incorporating into the novel a lot of information about something very few readers, especially high school readers, will know much about: skydiving. I can't think of another book, YA or other, that has used a skydiving school as the primary setting. As a literary device, the act of jumping out of an airplane -- freeing oneself of inhibitions and risking one's life in a freefall plummeting to earth -- could take on many meanings and has the potential to be greatly overused. Surprisingly, Barrett leaves the potential exploitation of these thematic metaphors, similes, and (likely) cliches relatively untouched. It is up to the reader to decipher the apparent symbolism.
Despite its potential, some of the book's major characters experience little growth and eventually fall flat. Clancy's overly protective father, who never talked to Clancy about her mother after the accident, drops a bombshell on Clancy at the end of the novel but has only become slightly less clingy. Clancy is a contradiction; she is both strong and independent yet controlled by her father and boyfriend in the beginning, and by the end is only starting to find her way. Theo, Clancy's boyfriend, comes and goes from the story too conveniently, even when he's fifteen hundred miles (or a 24 hours' drive one way) away. It's convenient to the plot that he shows up for 'a long weekend' when he does, but it's hard to fathom a 16 year old driving 48 hours round trip for just a few hours at home. Denny plays the role of psychologist and causes Clancy to think about her own motivations and reasoning, but also exits all too abruptly.
Teen readers might look past the flaws and enjoy the story without digging too deeply. I'll buy a couple copies for my library and see if anyone is willing to "jump out of a perfectly good airplane" with it.