Finished Choke by Diana Lopez. I received a copy from the publisher at BEA.
Windy is mostly content with her life as part of the “general population” in her middle school. She has a great best friend (Elena) and a crush on a guy who, even if he isn’t interested in her, is at least nice to her. Yes, the two coolest girls in school pick on her, but life could be worse, right?
Then Nina moves to town. She’s effortlessly cool and confident and wants to be Windy’s friend. Elena doesn’t seem to like her, but maybe she’s just jealous. And then Nina introduces Windy to the concept of “breath sisters.” Windy doesn’t know what that is, but she knows she wants to be part of it.
Except it turns out that it’s related to the choking game—someone chokes you until you pass out. When you come to, you experience a huge rush.
This is YA but I think it’s more of a middlegrade book. Windy seems very young, even for an eighth grader.
The choking game sounds weird, but that may be because I am 32 and being choked until you pass out doesn’t sound fun to me. I would question whether kids actually do this, but there are resources in the back of the book, so apparently they do.
This is an interesting book and definitely something that I didn’t really think about. If you have an elementary school-age kid, I would definitely pass this along to them. It’s probably better to learn that the choking game is dangerous (and kind of gross) well before confronted with peer pressure about it.
I actually heard about kids doing this a few years ago. It became a “thing”. The idea of being choked scares me so I can’t comprehend it.