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amgmontavon 's review for:
The Ballerinas
by Rachel Kapelke-Dale
CONTAIN SPOILERS
What worked: Ballerinas. I love to learn the nitty-gritty side of ballet. And, in that regard, this book didn’t disappoint.
I also enjoy books with foreign characters. Other readers complained about the author mentioning the language sometimes. But I actually liked that she kept reminding us these characters, with a couple of exceptions, were French.
The narration following past and present until they collided wasn’t problematic for me. I really enjoy non-chronological narratives. Hard to follow? Yes? But it helps to build the mystery.
Speaking of mystery, here is what didn’t work: This book is not like Black Swan. It’s not a thriller, not even a mystery. I would classify it as Women’s Fiction. The coming-of-age story of three female friends in the world of ballet. Their friendship, what separate but also join them. Their choices, mistakes, regrets and feelings. That’s all this book is about, so…
Now we get into the nitty-gritty territory of what the author tried to accomplish with her message. Every book has a theme, a message, and the author needs to be careful in not showing too much of themselves in trying to bring that across the pages, otherwise it’ll come across as “preachy”, independently of what the message is. And that’s the main problem I had with “The Ballerinas”. There were different issues from sexual harassment to emotional abuse to abortion, and so many other things that the author tried to tackle, only to have them fall flat.
Every single men in the story is an a-hole who get away with the awful and criminal things they do. But it seemed like the author wanted to show that every men on the face of the Earth is a POS. As I said, “preachy”.
In the end, the MC literally got away with murder so the message of males getting away with their crimes against females got diluted in that melodrama. And I do like a good melodrama, but in this case it was so over-the-top I truly didn’t care about the MC’s motivation. Thinking about, maybe the MC doesn’t really have a consciousness. Look at how she treated her friends, especially Stella who was her mother-figure.
And the so-called secret? I called it Lindsay knew all along. So that was very anticlimactic and it didn’t work well as motivation for the main plot point.
All in all it’s a solid story with few boo-boos. Good, but not extraordinary.
I received an ARC copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
What worked: Ballerinas. I love to learn the nitty-gritty side of ballet. And, in that regard, this book didn’t disappoint.
I also enjoy books with foreign characters. Other readers complained about the author mentioning the language sometimes. But I actually liked that she kept reminding us these characters, with a couple of exceptions, were French.
The narration following past and present until they collided wasn’t problematic for me. I really enjoy non-chronological narratives. Hard to follow? Yes? But it helps to build the mystery.
Speaking of mystery, here is what didn’t work: This book is not like Black Swan. It’s not a thriller, not even a mystery. I would classify it as Women’s Fiction. The coming-of-age story of three female friends in the world of ballet. Their friendship, what separate but also join them. Their choices, mistakes, regrets and feelings. That’s all this book is about, so…
Now we get into the nitty-gritty territory of what the author tried to accomplish with her message. Every book has a theme, a message, and the author needs to be careful in not showing too much of themselves in trying to bring that across the pages, otherwise it’ll come across as “preachy”, independently of what the message is. And that’s the main problem I had with “The Ballerinas”. There were different issues from sexual harassment to emotional abuse to abortion, and so many other things that the author tried to tackle, only to have them fall flat.
Every single men in the story is an a-hole who get away with the awful and criminal things they do. But it seemed like the author wanted to show that every men on the face of the Earth is a POS. As I said, “preachy”.
In the end, the MC literally got away with murder so the message of males getting away with their crimes against females got diluted in that melodrama. And I do like a good melodrama, but in this case it was so over-the-top I truly didn’t care about the MC’s motivation. Thinking about, maybe the MC doesn’t really have a consciousness. Look at how she treated her friends, especially Stella who was her mother-figure.
And the so-called secret? I called it Lindsay knew all along. So that was very anticlimactic and it didn’t work well as motivation for the main plot point.
All in all it’s a solid story with few boo-boos. Good, but not extraordinary.
I received an ARC copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.