Reviews with content warning for Infertility - The Ballerinas

Reviews tagging 'Infertility'

The Ballerinas by Rachel Kapelke-Dale

18 reviews

toadtornado's review

dark fast-paced

2.0

2 stars for:
•An extremely unlikeable main character who faces no true consequences for her actions.
•The last half of the book is nothing but a girlboss power trip fantasy.
•author repeats things mentioned in earlier chapters like it’s some big revelation when the MC has know canonically since chapter 5. Sloppy writing.

Daniel’s death made me cackle because of how stupid it was

Good things about the book:
•how she describes music and ballet is beautiful
•has that fun trashy book quality that keeps you interested just because it’s bad

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temeade's review

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emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

OMG! This book was amazing! The beginning was a little slow at the start however, there are little sprinkles of things that made me think, "wait what?" that appeared as though they were not going to be brought up again. I loved the details and the alternating timeline of telling the story. Kapelke-Dale kept my curiosity on it's toes through the many twists and turns of Delphine's life choices. Several times my mouth fell agape as I was shocked that not everyone is who they seem to be.

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emdohco's review

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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jcinf's review

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challenging dark hopeful reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book was everything I didn’t know I needed.

• Friendship between women
• The secrets we keep
• The relentless and exhausting pursuit of perfection (one that I’d argue is an experience profoundly belonging to women)
• The feeling of being watched that all women live with

This book ended up healing me in ways I didn’t expect. Here are some of my favorite quotes. Huge spoilers in the last couple:

We all stuck to our stories. And it is so easy to see someone through only one own lens: the role they play in yours. Stella had been right. I’d only ever seen her as a guru, a mentor, the friendly neighborhood witch. Who was Stella in her own story?

I’ve always thought dying would be a little bit like dissolving into the sun. We leave our little frames behind and see the whole picture for the first time. The entire panorama. I like to feel the sun on my face because I can practice living and practice dying. Both at the same time.

I watched her, struggling for perfection, this woman who had been struggling for perfection for more than twenty years, and I was fascinated.

This is why I loved choreographing. This is why it was better than dancing. Instead of trying to contort myself into someone else’s vision, I would take what was already inside me and find the perfect vessel for it.

Living our lives as though we expect it to be forgotten. As though now is all that matters. It might be easier on the mind to live like that, but it’s harder in the soul.

You’re bigger than us. And after everything’s said and done, we depend on your goodwill. Not just to make things easier. For survival. If you want, to you can kill us, and we know it.

This wasn’t the movies in our lives didn’t work that way. Someone was always, always watching us and it was too late. It had been too late since I pushed him through the window. It had been too late long before then. Besides, I didn’t want to cover this up. Monstrous and horrible as his body had become, as horrified as I was that I actually killed somebody, I also felt like I was watching the stage at the end of the best dance I’ve ever made. In the darkness, I felt my mother beside me. Smiling. Maybe, after everything, this was her legacy. She spent her life performing for the void but two hands on Daniel‘s chest and I flip the script, made the only ballet that could ever truly be for us and about us at the same time. And achieved what she never could: we had become the spectators for once. We had been the ones to please. And he was the one who failed. His death was my masterpiece. Because that’s all ballet is, in the end. Just bodies moving through time and space.

Absolutely stunning novel.

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frantically's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

The ballet aspect of this book — the techniques, the industry, the trauma the ballerinas face was researched with obvious love and diligence and was really the highlight of the book. The supposed feministic message (if it can be called that?) was like trying to swim through musky water and it wasn't a fun experience. The ending was just a tad too ridiculous and perfect for my taste.

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