A review by roget
Take the Lead by Alexis Daria

lighthearted medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No
In this story, Gina works as a professional dancer on a television series loosely based on Dancing With the Stars. Despite being super talented and hardworking, she's yet to take the trophy or make it to the finals, but this season, she's paired with a reality t.v. survivalist named Stone who might provide the perfect partnership to get them the win. Things get sort of complicated when it becomes clear the producers are pushing a "showmance" angle on their partnership, and Gina isn't pleased because she has strict clauses in her contract to restrict that sort of thing. (She's Latina, and she doesn't want to feed into stereotypes or restrict her future professional opportunities by being known as someone who hooked up with a work colleague.) To make matters more complex, Stone's reality show isn't all that it appears, and his family is constantly pressuring him to stay quiet and keep the secrets behind their own production, which essentially isolates him from making meaningful connections with others. As you might guess, Stone and Gina have fantastic chemistry, though, and keeping their developing relationship a secret proves difficult.

For my fellow aces/awkward goobs/persons who do not fancy on page spice: There is MA content in this story, but I was able to skip/skim without confusion.

My take:
This story is complicated. At times, I really loved Gina and her ambition, and I was deeply invested in her success. But her reactions didn't always ring true to me, especially when
Stone purposefully neglected to tell her that they'd been filmed kissing. This felt like a huge deal, and Gina's mentality in her reaction was already undercutting the legitimacy of her feelings (i.e. she was internally acknowledging that she wasn't THAT upset, it was mostly a defense mechanism). But...Gina has every right to be furious? Even if she was helpless to stop the show from using the footage, she deserved to know, and that wasn't respectful of Stone to make that call on her behalf--especially since this was her long term working environment and not his. I understand she talked to a producer alone about a different situation when she was photographed leaving Stone's apartment, but the contexts were different, and Stone was not unaware of the fact that they'd been photographed when she did. So, comparing those two moments as justification didn't really make sense to me. The story includes an apology from Stone at the very end, but it's already been skated over because Gina's decided by then that she overreacted. I guess I didn't follow her internal reasoning very well, or how she chose to process Stone's actions. That bothered me a lot, and it kept me from enjoying the story like I might've.
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While Gina's professional arch is really interesting, I wish we would've gotten a closer look at the confrontation/conclusion of Stone's. The book builds up the pressure he feels in his family's reality show a lot, but we don't see the resolution on page. Meli was cool, though. <3

Ultimately, many of the dance numbers were fun to read about, and the reality show pressures were a unique plot element, but this one wasn't for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and  St. Martin's Griffin for providing an ARC of this rerelease for consideration for review. <3
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