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A review by heatherhazereads
Last Dance on the Starlight Pier by Sarah Bird
4.0
It's Texas in the late 1920's and Evie Devlin gets an opportunity to escape her horrible narcissist mother by heading to nursing school. But three years later on the day of her pinning ceremony, a horrible and shameful secret from her youth comes bubbling to the surface and she is forced to flee... without recurving her nursing pin. Distraught and hopeless, she stumbles upon a dance marathon and an whole new world swallows Evie. She can be a nurse here, even without being registered, but she has no idea what she is getting into by joining the unpredictable underbelly of the dance marathons of the Depression era.
First, I had no idea the scope of insanity that these dance marathons entailed. These were brutal and downright unsafe and inhumane. It's wild to me what people were entertained by in addition to the risks desperate dancers would take to stay off the streets. I found myself falling down Google rabbit holes to learn more about these fascinating marathons (spoiler alert: they were subsequently banned due to the sheer unsafely of their practices.)
As for the book itself - it ironically also felt like a marathon. I swear I was reading this book for months, not 10 days (which is much longer than my 4 to 5 day average). The story was interesting, characters were decent, but man did this book drag. I nearly put it down many times but, like the exhausted dancers fighting to stay on their feet, I pushed on. If you enjoy a major slow burn historical fiction thick novel with many interesting characters, this may be the one for you.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this in exchange for my honest review. It surely was a marathon I won't forget!
First, I had no idea the scope of insanity that these dance marathons entailed. These were brutal and downright unsafe and inhumane. It's wild to me what people were entertained by in addition to the risks desperate dancers would take to stay off the streets. I found myself falling down Google rabbit holes to learn more about these fascinating marathons (spoiler alert: they were subsequently banned due to the sheer unsafely of their practices.)
As for the book itself - it ironically also felt like a marathon. I swear I was reading this book for months, not 10 days (which is much longer than my 4 to 5 day average). The story was interesting, characters were decent, but man did this book drag. I nearly put it down many times but, like the exhausted dancers fighting to stay on their feet, I pushed on. If you enjoy a major slow burn historical fiction thick novel with many interesting characters, this may be the one for you.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this in exchange for my honest review. It surely was a marathon I won't forget!