Smells Like Tween Spirit

March 1, 2022

After Class Mom, You've Been Volunteered, and Yoga Pant Nation, what's next for cheeky, high-spirited Jen Dixon, who's never fit the suburban mom mold? Now she's the new Mat Mom of the Pioneer Middle School wrestling team and soon learns that it's not all fun and games. Middle-school parenting at it most glorious goriest; with a 60,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 27, 2022
In the winsome fourth installment of Gelman’s Class Mom series (after Yoga Pant Nation), a middle-aged woman balances supporting her son’s newfound interest in wrestling and caring for her aging parents. After Jen’s seventh-grade son, Max, decides to join his school’s wrestling team, Jen surprises herself by signing up to be a team “Mat Mom” and getting sucked into a wrestling mom subculture with tacky custom T-shirts, road trips to matches, and a feud with another mom who challenges Jen to a charity wrestling match. Jen also juggles the demands of her job as a spin instructor with caregiving duties for her elderly father, who has dementia. She devotes an increasing share of her time to watching him while her mother plays bridge at an assisted living center where her mother’s ex-boyfriend now lives, raising Jen’s suspicions. As Jen’s commitments begin to overwhelm her and her father’s health deteriorates, she relies on her fellow wrestling moms more than she ever expected. Readers will speed through this witty, pithy tale that brings back Jen’s lovable snark to delightful effect. This winning sequel lives up to its predecessors.

July 15, 2022
Jen Dixon is back again (after Yoga Pant Nation, 2021) for another school year of dealing with the ins and outs of parenting her adult and tween children, caring for her aging parents, her career as a spin instructor, and of course volunteering for school activities. This year, it's the wrestling team who needs her efforts, and despite initial misgivings--middle school wrestlers absolutely stink--it's not as bad as she feared it would be. However, after not-so-accidentally making an enemy of a rival ""mat mom,"" Jen finds herself set to wrestle the woman in a fundraiser. Between that and her daughters going into business together, what could go wrong? When unexpected tragedy strikes, Jen is forced to re-evaluate her priorities. Fans of the series will be thrilled to see more of Jen and the family, and newcomers will want to learn more about this quirky family. With a funny, engaging, relatable story and an realistically imperfect main character, Gelman's storytelling is fun and engaging, and she promises she's only just getting started.

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Starred review from June 1, 2022

Gelman's fourth "Class Mom" novel (following Yoga Pant Nation) is, as always, fabulous. Filled with her signature one-liners and painfully truthful and funny emails, this entry follows fearless Jen Dixon as she navigates her son Max's seventh-grade year. Max is on the wrestling team, so Jen becomes a "mat mom" for the squad at Pioneer Middle School (PMS for short, and the irony is not lost on Jen), in addition to her other activities: helping with the dreaded science fair; teaching her spin class; caring for her ailing parents; and being cheerleader for her daughters' new healthy cooking venture. Her daughters fall for Max's wrestling coach, who's so attractive that Jen herself can barely look him in the eye. The other "mat moms" are reminiscent of her previous class mom and PTA days, with one mom in particular egging Jen to get her own wrestle on. The hysterical scenes are interspersed with more intimate moments as the dynamics change between her husband, her children, and her parents. VERDICT Gelman's new "Class Mom" novel doesn't disappoint: it will leave readers laughing out loud and desperate for the next installation in this hilarious, beloved series.--Erin Holt

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.