Head Above Water

Overview

Skye Kimball is juggling more than most high school juniors: honor-roll grades, a demanding swim season, a boyfriend pushing for a level of intimacy she hasn't decided she wants, and a home life stretched thin by her mother's two jobs. Since her father's departure years earlier, Skye has become the household's second adult, and much of that weight falls on her care for her older brother Sunny, who has Down syndrome.

The novel tracks a single swim season as Skye trains toward the state championship, hoping a strong finish will translate into a scholarship and, with it, a way out of the responsibilities pressing in on her. Her bond with Sunny runs through every part of that effort — a source of pride and tenderness one moment, resentment and exhaustion the next.

Rottman keeps the focus tight and interior, following Skye's shifting sense of what actually matters as she's forced to weigh her own ambitions against obligations she never chose but can't walk away from.

A Coming-of-Age Story Built Around Caregiving

What sets this novel apart from typical swim-team or first-romance narratives is its insistence on showing caregiving as ordinary, exhausting, unglamorous work rather than a backdrop for a lesson in tolerance. Sunny is written as a full character with his own presence in Skye's life, not a device for her growth, and the book doesn't shy away from her frustration and guilt alongside her love for him. That honesty about mixed feelings — resenting a family member you also fiercely protect — gives the story its emotional core.

The book sits within a body of young adult fiction that takes teenage responsibility seriously, treating Skye's exhaustion, her financial anxieties about college, and her uncertainty about her boyfriend's expectations as equally weighty parts of adolescence, rather than subordinating the romantic plot to the family plot or vice versa. Rottman, known for grounded, issue-driven YA writing, uses Skye's swimming to structure the novel's pacing while keeping the real tension centered on the household.

Why Head Above Water Has Been Challenged

Objections to the novel have centered on its candid treatment of teenage sexuality, including Skye's conflicted feelings about her boyfriend's physical expectations and her own readiness, which some reviewers have judged too explicit or too normalizing for a young-adult audience. Challenges have also pointed to the book's frank language and its depiction of a teenager navigating pressure in a romantic relationship without heavy-handed moral framing, arguing that it should be restricted from school libraries or classroom use rather than presented without qualification. In the catalog tracked here, the book has drawn a single challenge each at the state and district level, reflecting a narrower but still notable pattern of concern over its handling of adolescent sexuality.