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A review by vimesheva
Second Position by Katherine Locke
2.0
The writing was decent, but it's a fairly short book where basically nothing happens. The author spends the majority of the time describing Zed and Aly's emotions but while those descriptions are initially evocative, they repeat over and over (while, again, nothing actually happens plot-wise) and therefore lose their magic rather quickly.
While a lot of time is spent in Zed's head and you start to get to know him a bit (but not that much), Aly is two-dimensional and entirely defined by her eating disorder/depression/anxiety/mania/etc. Despite the repeated assertion that ballet defines Aly, I actually did not really feel that come through at all. And at the end of the day, I felt really bad for Zed because no one (not Aly, not his friend Dan, or any other briefly mentioned characters) seem to give a crap about the fact that he (a) lost his career and (b) lost his leg which sort of baffled me--those are some pretty crazy-important things to lose. I got the sense that the trauma was assigned to his character to give him depth, but in reality he was just there to be a doormat for Aly.
Overall, a quick read with good prose but light on the plot and character development.
While a lot of time is spent in Zed's head and you start to get to know him a bit (but not that much), Aly is two-dimensional and entirely defined by her eating disorder/depression/anxiety/mania/etc. Despite the repeated assertion that ballet defines Aly, I actually did not really feel that come through at all. And at the end of the day, I felt really bad for Zed because no one (not Aly, not his friend Dan, or any other briefly mentioned characters) seem to give a crap about the fact that he (a) lost his career and (b) lost his leg which sort of baffled me--those are some pretty crazy-important things to lose. I got the sense that the trauma was assigned to his character to give him depth, but in reality he was just there to be a doormat for Aly.
Overall, a quick read with good prose but light on the plot and character development.