Like Other Girls is a Young Adult novel by Britta Lundin released in 2021. It features a Butch Lesbian protagonist, but it's a Sports Story focusing on American football rather than a Queer Romance.
Mara Deeble loves basketball; but she doesn't love her teammates. Especially not Carly Nakata, who got her kicked off the team last year for fighting. Now, her coach will only let her back on the team this year if Mara can prove that she can play a team sport while keeping her anger in check, any more fights and she's off the team for good. This means Mara has to spend the season playing volleyball with a bunch of popular girly girls she can hardly stand or lose basketball.
But then Mara realizes there's another team sport at Elkhorn she can play. There's no girls football team but all that means is that legally they have to let her on the only football team there is, even if she'll be the only girlnote . So what if it disappoints her mother and makes her stand out as too masculine even more than she did already and pisses off her brother and is not nearly as peaceful and low stakes as volleyball for someone who's trying not to get into any more fights? Mara is good at football. Even though she's never technically played, she still knows how to throw a ball, run and tackle people. She knows she can keep up with the guys on the team from the times they've played capture the flag together outside of school. She's big, and she's only gotten bigger over the summer since she started lifting water jugs. Once she proves herself, no one will care that she's a girl. They'll recognize that she's a skilled football player first. Who knows? Maybe she won't even want to rejoin the basketball team!
This all goes to hell when four girls led by Carly show up to practice one day "to play football". They also apparently want to be known as the 'Elkhorn Five' and for Mara to join them as they have their pictures taken for the local paper. No one's happy with this, but if Mara can join so can the other girls. It doesn't matter that Mara actually cares about football and they probably don't even know how to play. It doesn't matter that attention is the last thing that Mara wants while they're clearly joining the team just to get some.
Being the only girl would've been so much easier than having to deal with this.
All spoilers are unmarked!
Like Other Girls includes examples of:
- Aloof Ally: Mara starts as something like this to the other girls on the football team. Truthfully, she can't stand the fact that they joined the team (Carly she can't stand just in general), but she also sees that they're being unfairly neglected by the coach and the rest of the team. Since they are totally inexperienced, she takes it upon herself to start teaching them how to play football and also helps them with conditioning and training at their own unofficial practices.
- Aloof Older Brother: Noah is one of these to Mara, it's made even worse when she joins the football team (for which he is The Quarterback). He gets better eventually though.
- Berserk Button: By the end of the book, Mara has decided that hurting Carly is this for her.
No one hurts Carly on my watch. No one laughs about it. Not in front of me.
- Bittersweet Ending: Just barely classifies as one, sweet as it is. Elkhorn loses all of their football games and actually end up getting disqualified for the huge brawl they had during the end of their final game, but the Elkhorn Five aren't very upset about it. They manage to convince some, but not all, of their conservative community that women should be able to play football and have also become idols to younger girls who also play or want to play. Mara has shed her Not Like Other Girls mentality, made new friends and repaired her bond with her brother, though she's permanently lost Quinn. Mara's mom ends up accepting Reese and Jupiternote , so Mara has some queer adults in her life she can offer her support, but her mom (and the whole of Elkhorn) is no less homophobic. By the end, Mara remains in the closet and doesn't plan on coming out to her family until at least college when she'll be able to stand on her own. Her family is also still struggling financially as well, but her father is finally coming out of his depression to become more active in his children's lives again. The book ends with the Elkhorn Five hanging out and coming up with an idea to start a girls football league in their area.
- Blatant Lies: Quinn says that he was only ever friends with Mara because having a girl best friend made him look better to girls. Mara calls this out for being obvious bullshit but tells him that it still hurts to hear.
- Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Zigzagged. The whole of the Elkhorn Five do get the join the football team (as is their legal right) and all of them play at one point or another, but the team doesn't actually win any games.
- Breast Attack: The whole plot of the book is kicked off by Mara getting kicked off the girls basketball team for fighting after she punches Carly. She was aiming for her stomach but underestimated their height difference and ended up landing a punch straight on Carly’s tit.
- Butch Lesbian: Mara, the main protagonist, is a closeted one. She's actually unfamiliar with the term until she is introduced to it by Jupiter, another, much older, butch lesbian who recently moved to Elkhorn from Portland.
I feel a weight lift at the word butch. Is that what I am? [...] Jupiter feels butch, with her boots and her stride and her hair.
- Deep South: Takes place in a conservative small town in Oregon.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- Noah reacts with absolute disgust when Mara tells him about how Quinn started grinding on her and trying to make out with her without her consent while drunk at his party. Mara is actually relieved to hear it, since she and her brother had been fighting so much at the time.
- Turnip looks on with shock and dismay after he tackles Carly so hard that she’s left on the ground unmoving. Mara notes that it must be bad if even Turnip looks disturbed.
- Mara’s mother uninvites her from church after she buzzes her hair, even with her attempt to soften the blow by spending her back-to-school clothes shopping money on ultra feminine clothes she tells her mom she’s planning on wearing to church the next day. When her mother sees the haircut, she tells her Mara has gone too far this time and that she won’t be allowing her to go to church.
- Female Misogynist: Mara is a downplayed example; she's clearly dealing with internalized misogyny before Character Development which is for the most part expressed in her naive and immature attitudes. She judges the volleyball team and the girls on it harshly, seeing them as shallow and alien to her. While interacting with boys, she doesn't balk at any of the rude comments they make about girls and even participates by making some herself. When the other girls join the football team, she feels humiliated that she's being associated with them and angry that they joined the football team at all, believing them (or at least Carly) to be "fame whores" who probably don't even care about football, know how to play, or take it seriously.
- Feminine Mother, Tomboyish Daughter: Played Straight with Mara and her mom and inverted with Carly and her mom.
- Gentle Giant: Ranger who's the biggest and by far the nicest guy ono the football team.
- Gone Swimming, Clothes Stolen: Played for Drama. After the Elkhorn Five shower following their game against Hixon, they discover that their clothes have been stolen. The obvious culprits are their own team, and they're forced to change back into their dirty uniforms to confront them about it. In the end, they don't get their clothes backnote , but tensions have definitely increased and a vote was taken that showed explicitly who wants the girls off the team and who doesn't.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Mara's inability to control her anger led to her attacking one of her teammates and getting kicked off the girls basketball team. In order to rejoin, she is tasked with playing a season of another team sport without fighting.
- Height Angst: It's implied that Quinn suffers from this to some degree. Mara claims that both her height and his are topics that she has to avoid when talking to Quinn.
- I Can Still Fight!: The whole reason Mara "fought" with Carly and got kicked off the girls basketball team is because the latter noticed Mara was showing signs of a concussion during one of their games and informed their coach, insisting that Mara shouldn't play for the remainder of the game. In doing so she ignored Mara's multiple attempts at convincing her that she was fine and her commands to not tell the coach anything.
- Incompatible Orientation: Mara spends quite a bit of time spent wondering if her crush Valentina could potentially be interested in girls at all, but it turns out that she really is straight. If that wasn't painful enough for Mara, the person who Valentina has a crush on that Mara was starting to suspect was her turned out to be Noah. She gets over it though.
- I Work Alone: Mara adopts this mentality after the night she kissed Valentina only to realize she wasn't interested, got sexually assaulted by Quinn and then punched him at his party and was finally told by Jupiter that she couldn't be the person Mara could turn to when times were rough. She slowly sheds this attitude as the book progresses before she is firmly aligned with the girls once again.
- Jerk Jock: They arguably make up most of the cast. The Elkhorn football team is pretty much made up entirely of Jerk Jocks (sans the other girls besides Mara and Ranger), though some count as a Jerks with Hearts of Gold while others are just regular jerks.
- Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Quinn. He's Mara's oldest and best friend, who turns out to be a total douche. Initially, Mara justifies his behavior by claiming that he's really a nice guy "under all that bluster" even though some topics just aren't worth bringing up to him, but after the Elkhorn Five join the football team their friendship becomes increasingly more strained, and it becomes clear that Quinn isn't a good friend or person. By the end of the book, Quinn is denying that he ever cared about Mara beyond wanting her around as his "girl best friend" to help him look better to girls and doesn't even imply feeling guilt over any of the shitty things he's done, much less actually apologizing.
- Jackie Robinson Story: A typical one where a girl joins her high school football team. There's a twist in that she is immediately followed by multiple other girls, who have other intentions in joining. It's also deconstructed in that it ultimately doesn't matter what any of the girls do or what any of them want, the people who are opposed to them playing don't actually care about anything beyond the fact that they're girls, whether they won or lost wouldn't have mattered.
- Mama Bear: Carly's mom shows hints of this when she meets Mara for the first time and recognizes her as the "girl who laid out [Carly] last year". Mara is sufficiently cowed by her threats, noting that despite her small size she still seemed like she could kick her ass.
Carly's mom: You lay a finger on my daughter in anger again and you're gonna answer to me, you hear me?
Mara: Yes, ma'am.
- Masculine–Feminine Gay Couple:
- Surprisingly averted with Jupiter and her partner, they appear to be a masc4masc couple (not a very common portrayal of sapphic relationships). Jupiter explicitly identifies herself as a butch while her partner Reese is nonbinary, uses they/them pronouns and dresses like a very typical farmer (who is actually a musician). Mara actually recognizes them as one of the children of the previous owner of the farm they and Jupiter live on. In her memory, Mara was always intimidated by them and knew them as someone who wore floral dresses and Mary Janes to church and never smiled. In the present they seem much happier and wear men's clothing.
- Played Straight with Mara and Carly with Mara being masculine and Carly being feminine, though Mara does appreciate how boyish Carly looks in her football uniform.
She's a girl girl. But in her football uniform, she looks like me. Boyish, in that way that shouldn't have a gender at all but does. - Minor Injury Overreaction:
- Downplayed with Quinn. He really does break his arm during Elkhorn's game against Linkport, but he exaggerates how painful it is. While sitting across from Mara on the bus ride back home he keeps moaning in pain. When Mara calls him out for this saying that "it can't possibly hurt that bad", he starts arguing about how "one of [her] little gal pals" cost them the game. At this point, Mara makes the wise decision to move to another seat.
- Played Straight with Linocln who tries to seek treatment for a broken wrist after the fight between Elkhorn players at the end of the book only to be told that it's just sprained.
- Morality Pet: Summer, one of the Elkhorn Five's young fans, serves as one to Mara. When Carly gets hurt during their final game against Linkport and Quinn and Wayne laugh about it, Summer ends up stopping Mara from fighting them. Because of her, Mara realizes that they aren't worth it and walks away. A fight still breaks out anyway.
- No Periods, Period: Averted. Mara starts her period in the middle of their game against Hixon, but Carly is able to give her a tampon.
- The Notable Numeral: The Elkhorn Five, which refers to the five girls who joined the football team. Of course, when the name first shows up in the Elkhorn Sentinel Mara still doesn't want anything to do with the other four girls and resents the name for including her.
- Neutrality Backlash: When the team decides to take a vote on the bus showing who thinks the Elkhorn Five shouldn't be on the team, Noah tries to avoid taking a side by neither standing nor sitting. Valentina immediately tells him to not "be a loser" and he decides to sit down fully in support of the girls. This hurts Mara who's upset that her brother cares more about the opinion of his crush than supporting his own sister, especially since she wouldn't be able to stay neutral even if she wanted to.
- Neutral No Longer: After some time being "Mara, solo", Mara rejoins the Elkhorn Five as they continue to conflict with a good chunk of the football team. Not (just) by being forcibly grouped in with them, she also makes an effort to support them.
- Not Like Other Girls: Sort of the most explored idea in the book, actually. Mara sees herself as different from other girls. The boys she talks to see her as different from the other girls. When a group of girls joins the football team because she joined the football team, her worldview is forcibly shattered. She's abandoned by her team who now see her as one of the girls. There's a lot of conflict before Mara finally grows to not only respect the other girls but also see them as her friends (as well as recognize that her previous friends weren't her friends at all).
- One of the Boys: Mara. At least at the start of the book, this described her perfectly. Her Best Friend was a boy, and she did hang out with him and his friends who were also boys more than any girls. At first when she joins the football team it looks like this might change, but Mara actually ends up growing closer to the boys on the team and they praise her for being their "man on the inside". This comes to an end pretty quickly when the other girls join the team and the boys blame Mara.
- Platonic Life-Partners: This is what Mara and Quinn were at the beginning of the book, or at least that's how she saw them.
- Poor Communication Kills: While Mara can't be blamed for keeping her sexuality to herself, she still does make a number of assumptions about other characters that hurt her more than anything and qualify for this trope. Especially so when the only thing that's preventing her from communicating is her own pride.
- For one, rather than asking her crush outright if she might be interested in her (or girls at all), Mara just goes in for the kiss after she starts to believe that Valentina is sending her signs that she likes her back. It turns out that Valentina was straight and that the crush Mara thought she had on her was actually on her brother.
- To a lesser extent, Mara always assumed that she and Quinn were Platonic Life-Partners who were so close to one another that certain things didn't need to be communicated for them to be understood. This turns out to be an increasingly inaccurate description of their friendship as the book progresses. Although Mara thought that Quinn genuinely supported her joining the football team since he believed she would be a good fit, it turns out that he just thought that it would be funny to have a girl on the team. Since she first shows up to practice, he calls attention to her presence and gender instead of behaving like nothing was out of the ordinary about it as Mara would have preferred. This eventually culminates in Quinn sexually assaulting Mara while drunk at his party, though this is in no way Mara's fault.
- And finally, Carly, who Mara always figured hated her, turned out to actually have a crush on her (before and after she punched her in the tit!). To the reader, it's somewhat obvious, and makes it funny to read their interactions where Mara sees Carly as some sort of Sitcom Archnemesis while Carly is clearly crushing on her.
"Stay safe," Carly says, handing me two quarters, her fingers brushing my palm in a movement so gentle I have to believe she's doing it on purpose to draw attention to the fact that the last time we touched, I was punching her in the boob. - Pride: It's a Sports Story about American high school football set in a small, southern, conservative town so yeah, it shows up in abundance. Everyone who opposes the Elkhorn Five playing football seems to do so to protect their pride more than anything. After the girls join, any misfortune that befalls the team is their fault. Even the ones that probably could have been prevented by not antagonizing or ignoring the girls as teammates. In football, there's no such thing as crying or accepting defeat. Although the Elkhorn Hunters have never been known for their successes, they still can't seem to handle failure in any way.
- Rage Breaking Point: It looks like Mara has reached this when Carly is severely injured in a game and all Quinn and Wayne do is mock her for it, but she actually stops herself from lashing out physically when Summer calls to her from the stands to ask her if Carly is going to be okay. Mara decides Quinn isn't worth it and backs down. Noah doesn't share the same sentiment punches Quinn out right then and there. From there, it's an all-out brawl between all of the Elkhorn Hunters.
- Shout-Out:
- Mara watching the Hayley Kiyoko video "Girls Like Girls" when she was twelve was her LGBT Awakening.
- Mara named her Australian Shepard Delle Donne after her favorite basketball player.
- Tayler tells Mara she looks like Megan Rapinoe after she buzzes her hair.
- Jupiter says that Mara can "talk about [her] being [Mara's] Miss Honey when [she's] sober" after Mara shows up to her house shitfaced and offhandedly asks Jupiter if she could adopt her.
- Sickening "Crunch!": When Carly is tackled by Turnip.
- Soapbox Sadie: Carly Nakata. It's why Mara finds it so hard to get along with her. Mara, even though she doesn't present herself as the perfect girl or daughter by any means, works to avoid offending others in order to be accepted and isn't really invested in any issues but her own personal ones (Carly is often involved with these issues in some way or form). Carly is very passionately opinionated in comparison.
- Sports Story: Mostly about American football.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The Elkhorn football team doesn't win any of their games from this season. This makes sense since they were always pretty bad and none of the Elkhorn Five was all that experienced with football. More than anything though, there's a clear lack of respect between teammates. The coach doesn't bother training the girls at all, even though Mara was the only one with anything close to actual experience playing football. Mara actually ends up teaching them all the basics and they take the initiative to have extra unofficial practices by themselves. Their teammates frequently seemed more focus on showing up or intimidating the girls than actually playing the game to win. Their last game ends with Elkhorn getting disqualified for having a brawl within the team after Carly is injured and Quinn and Waynenote laugh about it. Mara actually doesn't participate though, rather than fighting she runs to a news anchor to give an interview. It's Noah who throws the first punch at Quinn after Mara has already made the decision to walk away.
- Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: A platonic example with Quinn and Mara. Mara is six foot two and Quinn is five foot three, probably the smallest guy on the football team. This usually isn't a problem for Quinn since hitting him actually requires being able to catch up to him.
- Twofer Token Minority: Not only is Carly the only out queer girl at Elkhorn, she's also one of the few Asian kids in the predominantly white and Latino school.
- Trauma Conga Line: Mara has a very bad night after she kisses Valentina, her long-time crush who she was starting to suspect may have liked her back, only to realize that she was very much not interested in her. Mara feels terrible about kissing someone who didn't want to be kissed by her and berates herself for this internally while apologizing to Valentina and pleading with her not to tell anyone that she's gay. After a moment of Stunned Silence, Valentina tells her that she won't tell anyone. Immediately afterwards, Mara bikes away from Carly's house where the Elkhorn Five had been hanging out to go to Quinn's party. While there she gets absolutely wasted and then Quinn, her best friend since they were small children, sexually assaults her in front of all their male teammates. Mara punches him and leaves the party, but she ends up crashing and hurting her elbow when she tries to ride her bike while drunk. At this point, she decides to go to Jupiter's place. When she gets there, she tells Jupiter about Valentina and Quinn as coherently as she can while being heavily inebriated. It's then that Jupiter makes her realize that punching Quinn might be counted as fighting, which could get her kicked off the football team and never allowed back on the basketball team. After Jupiter gives her some tea, Mara offhandedly asks her if she would adopt her. Jupiter responds by freezing before she tells her that she needs to leave and drives Mara back home. Before they finally part ways, Mara asks Jupiter if she's mad at her and tells her that she'll stop doing whatever it is that upset her. Jupiter apologetically informs her that she's not mad at Mara, just upset about her situation and worried since it looks bad for an underage girl to be alone with a thirty-five year old butch woman (who her mother had already forbidden her from seeing) so late at night. Jupiter tells Mara that although she would love to be a person that Mara could lean on when struggling, she can't because of all the assumptions people would make based on her appearance. With this Mara loses the last person she had to support her. She finally lets herself break down and cry after Jupiter leaves.
- True Companions: The Elkhorn Five end up becoming this by the end of the novel, it more than makes up for Mara losing her "friends" from the football team.
- Trying Not to Cry: When Jupiter tells Mara that she should stop seeking her out because it looks bad for both of them, Mara agrees and only lets herself cry once she's out of sight.
And I'm still willing myself not to cry, because I don't want her to know how freaked out I am right now, because I still want her to think I'm cool, even if she doesn't want to hang out anymore.
- Wanted a Gender-Conforming Child:
- Mara's mom wants her daughter to start dressing and acting more feminine more than anything. Because of this, she and Mara clash constantly.
- Interestingly inverted with Carly and her mom. Carly's mom had actually been hoping for a more tomboyish daughter who she could share her interests with. Instead, she got Carly. When Valentina asks why her mom calls her "Charlie", Carly reveals that it's her given name and that she prefers not to use it in favor of the more feminine "Carly".
- You Are Not Alone: Mara realizes this after the big fight between all the Elkhorn hunters (besides Carly, who was injured, and Mara herself, who chose not to participate) at the end of their game against Linkport. She makes an effort to be there for her friends as well by running to give an interview instead of participating in the fight.
And I realize, watching my friends fight side by side... I don't need to take on every fight myself. I have allies. Friends, who are willing to protect me, stand up for what's right, so that I don't have to do it alone.
