In this book from award winner Rita Bullwinkle, written in 2024, eight young girls who dream of becoming world-class boxers stories' are told. To tell their story, Bullwinkle utilizes flashbacks, going back and forth between past and present. During these flashbacks, readers learn about the lengths the young boxers at the center of novel will go to win their respective championships. By sacrificing a lot, including typical experiences that young girls go through, and working hard, the girls learn what it takes to make it big. Readers learn about their cutthroat manuvering to best one another and their competition, to become the best, as well as the intense and unrelenting training they go through.
Critics and audiences resonated with the novel's themes of competition, violence, and, winning at all costs no matter the consequences. In their review of the novel, The Washtington Post had this to say. “Movement between graceful meditation and descriptions of fighting allows for both a dignified and a critical treatment of boxing. . . . Ideas are made particular with metaphor and strange details, which expand time poetically in each scene. . . . Eight two-minute rounds can contain a lot, it turns out.”
