Bright Burning Stars by A.K. Small
Rating: ★★★☆☆

Bright Burning Stars by A.K. Small had me curious with its focus on competitive ballet, but it didn't quite keep me hooked throughout. The story revolves around the intense world of a prestigious ballet academy where two friends compete fiercely for success, revealing the darker sides of ambition and friendship.

At first, I was drawn in by the competitive atmosphere and the characters' drive to excel in their art. Small's portrayal of the physical and emotional demands of ballet is vivid and gritty, offering a glimpse into the sacrifices required for artistic perfection. However, as the story progressed, I found the pacing uneven, with intense drama alternating with slower, less engaging moments.

The characters, while complex, didn't always feel fully developed, and their motivations sometimes felt predictable. I wanted more depth in their personal struggles and relationships to sustain my interest throughout the novel. While Bright Burning Stars has its compelling moments and offers insights into the competitive world of ballet, it didn't consistently hold my attention as I had hoped.

A.K. Small's "Bright Burning Stars" immerses readers into the competitive world of ballet, where passion clashes with ambition, and friendships are tested under the spotlight. Set at the Paris Opera Ballet School, Marine and Kate navigate a cutthroat environment where sacrifices must be made for success. Small's prose is captivating, delving into the emotional depths of her characters as they grapple with love, rivalry, and the pursuit of perfection. With gripping twists and turns, this debut novel explores the price of dreams and the sacrifices required to achieve them. "Bright Burning Stars" is a poignant and compelling read that lingers long after the final page.

Best buds Marine Duval and Kate Sanders are ballet stars-in-the-making at the Paris Opera Ballet School. But when a fellow student turns up dead, the two wonder how far they'd go to land the ultimate prize: a spot in the prestigious corps de ballet. Would they cheat, seduce their crush, the Demigod, or even die? But as they both get closer to the Demigod, and competition heats up, their friendship and futures hang in the balance.

Bright Burning Stars brings the drama and cattiness of the dance world to life. As a former dancer myself, I felt the pressure, pain, and thrill of competition alongside the characters. The author's own experience adds authenticity to the story, making it a must-read for dance enthusiasts. This book explores the sacrifices we make to win and whether it's worth losing those we love. I loved the mounting tension as selection day approached and found it to be an exciting and dramatic read.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy, but all opinions are my own.

As someone who grew up dancing ballet, I am always instantly drawn to any book/show/movie that involves dance. I love the artistry, drama, and experiences. Bright Burning Stars does an excellent job of conveying all three of those aspects.

The relationship dynamics found in this book are so well done. Marine and Kate’s friendship was very honest. As we grow, relationships change; add competition into the mix and friendships can be very difficult to maintain. I loved the alternating POVs as well. To be able to really understand what both Marine and Kate were thinking adds a dimension that just would not be possible if this story was only told in one of their perspectives.

As I said earlier, I love ballet. So, I really appreciated that the author of this book was actually a dancer, herself. I loved reading the dancing descriptions. Had someone not danced, they might have found it difficult to envision without knowing the terminology. But, I personally, really enjoyed it.

Bright Burning Stars also explores the complexities of striving to become a professional dancer. Because of this, it also includes some very heavy topics including struggling with body image, eating disorders, drug use, and abortion. While not every professional dancer experiences this, they almost certainly know someone who has experienced or struggled with at least one of these issues.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. Bright Burning Stars is emotional, engaging, and thoughtful. While this book was filled with difficulties, I loved how, ultimately, it ended with hope. I would recommend this book to anyone who is fascinated by the dance world or looking for a fast-paced and dramatic read.

Marine and Kate are roommates and best friends who both love ballet. This story follows them through what it means to be a dancer. It tackles friendship, young love, and harder topics like abortion, eating disorders, and suicide. This is a quick read for anyone who likes dance or just likes reading about the complexities of female friendships.

It was fine. I didn't find anything particularly unique about its portrayal of the ballet world. It included the standards of eating disorders, hypersexuality, and beat-up feet. It was, however, done well.

I don't have access to the book anymore. I have been using a new email for kindle for the last year. I will focus on new books instead of digging for the old files. I apologize for the inconvenience. It's not my intention to not review like this.

#Bright Burning Stars is a wonderful novel by # A. K. Small. It's also a major motion picture: Birds of Paradise. This will be on my Instagram blog Maddie_approves_book_reviews.💜🐾🐾
Thank you for the advance copy,
# Netgalley and #Algonquin Young Readers

Teen drama with friends that become rivals in order to reach their dream to become number one in the dance world. Unfortunately, this really does happen in real life. There is also a mystery to be solved in the story.

This was an interesting book. I really liked the setting, and the idea of friends becoming rivals was a great one. The mystery was a satisfying one, and I wasn't able to predict the outcome. Overall, a satisfying read.

I have a fascination with reading about professional ballerinas. Great burning stars is a Y a book that is a mix of dark academia and professional ballet students. Lots that trigger warnings for eating disorders and body dysmorphia throughout the entire book. I suppose it’s a sad reality of ballerinas at this level, but that doesn’t make it any less heartbreaking to read.

This story revolved around 2 girls who were dancers and best friends, who wanted to win the top prize - to join the Opera's prestigious corps de ballet. Marine and Kate have spent years training for this moment, but sometimes the pressure to win will tear down friendships. These teens must stay thin and focused and do whatever it takes to get ahead, but is it worth it?

This was a good read. It was well written and full of teen drama!

Thank you to Algonquin Young Readers and NetGalley for the #gifted copy of the book.

What’s more important? Competition or friendship when you are trying to get to the top?
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Marine and Kate are best friends and dancers at the Paris Opera Ballet School. Bonded from tragedy and hours of blood, sweat and tears in the studio. Nothing can come between them until they need to compete for the one solitary spot in the Corps de Ballet and the attention of the Demigod. They will go to great lengths to win. No deceit is too large when you are dancing your way to the top.
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Dark, twisty and sinful I love books showcasing the dark side of dance and this was indeed very dark.
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Thank you #algonquin and #NetGalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review

What a trippy, dark, unputdownable book! I loved being inside the cutthroat world of the ballet and the toxic female friendships the competitive atmosphere generates. Part "Center Stage," part "Black Swan," this YA thriller is drama-filled in all the right ways. I can't wait to watch the movie adaptation!

Thanks to Algonquin YR fr a copy to review.

Loyalty. Discipline. Hella girl drama. 

Bright Burning Stars features a ballet school in Paris where the students are absolutely cutthroat. The rats, as they are known, train and compete incessantly. They deal with all the ins and outs of adolescence but the lens is skewed towards success at all costs. The story follows two best friends, Marine and Kate who are as close as two young girls can be until the rigors of competition start to fray their bond. They experience sexual explotation, drug use and eating disorders while trying to figure out who they really are and what they really want.

The story touches on some heavy topics and I think probably deserves a little warning if its labelled YA. It's the type of book you'd want to discuss with your kids if they were to read it. Perhaps an epilogue that shows where the girls ended up and if it was all worth it would provide a better overall message for the YA audience. 

Certainly a page turner with lots of drama.

Thanks to Algonquin for a gifted copy. All opinions above are my own.

Yes I am feeling well. Yes I know this isn't a suburban drama. I do read other material I swear. And no the rating does not reflect that it's not part of that particular genre. The rating is because it was a slower read than I was used to. It was an interesting story that I did feel I had to finish. I really hate not finishing a book. I would say to definitely give it a read. You may enjoy it more than I did. I did enjoy the overall story concept though.

Marnie and Kate have been through everything together. Now they have to endure the trials and tribulations that go with being the best. Each with their strengths and weaknesses both girls train their hardest to earn the coveted prize. When one of their competitors ends up dead each has their focus broken. Clouding their judgement and putting a wedge between a bond that used to be indestructible.

A story about friendship, deceit and stopping at nothing to get what you want...no matter the consequences.

Thank you to Netgalley and Algonquin Young Readers for the eARC of this book. They offered it to me recently and based on it being significantly after the publication date, I am guessing it is tied in with the Netflix show that is based on this book.
I have read the book and watched the show. First off, the show seems loosely based on the book because there are significant changes to the storyline in this adaptation. Secondly, I enjoyed the book more than the show. The story is that Kate (an American) and Marine (French) have been best friends at the elite Paris Ballet School since they were small children. They have always helped each other and have a pact where they swore to each other to win the Prize (given to a single man and women graduate) together or not at all. This point is changed in the show, where they cast Kate's character as new to the school and forced to share a single bed room with Marine. I think the friendship/rivalry still worked but not as well as the relationship in the book.
As one would expect from a competitive, teenage coming-of-age story, there is a lot of drama. I feel like this read better than it played out on screen.
Overall, I enjoyed this book and appreciated what it was trying to do. The show was okay but not as compelling as the book.
If you like ballet or elite schools with lots of teenage drama, this one is for you.
#BrightBurningStars #NetGalley #AlgonquinYoungReaders

Marine and Kate become quick friends in a heightened situation as they are both competing for the one prize in a prestigious ballet school. When these students are living together and competing against each other, life is stressful 24 hours out of the day - there is no break from the stress.

Kate is an American from Virginia and a fish very out of water in Paris France. Marine is Parisian, but has her own hurdles as her twin recently passed away and dancing was a passion they shared. These girls want to become the best in their school to be able to move onto corps de ballet and there is only one spot. They will do almost anything to get that top spot and win the prize.

The pacing in this book felt frenetic and it felt as though it hopped from one spot to another. I know it read quickly for me, but it still felt as though the book was written with chaotic pacing in mind.

While my ballet days were numbered, I took all sorts of classes from the age of 5 up to college, when an injury stunted my ballet days, I grew to love watching it just as much and I love reading books in the world also! This book reminded me that I need to seek these books out more and read them here and there. Are there any ballet books that you would recommend?

While I've read a lot of books about competitive academia, whether it be magical or 'normal', I haven't read much from the point of view of an athlete/performer in training, especially not ballet. So for that alone I found this concept interesting, and I liked the idea of seeing how a friendship can evolve in and be shaped by such a competitive space (where only 1 can ever really pass). However, this really was not my thing at all. I found the setting itself interesting, but the story that took place in it just couldn't grip me.

First off, I just never felt connected to the characters at all. While Kate and Marine were friends, both of their POVs contained such harsh criticisms of the other that I never felt like I could positively look on either, and their opinions of each other bled into the POVs of each other. For example, Kate always called Marine young and naive, so you can't help but read Marine's chapters in that way as well. And Marine thought of Kate as boy-obsessed, which made me hyper-focus on how little she seemed to want to actually dance and more just wanted to find love? On top of that, I rarely got the feeling that either Marine or Kate actually liked to dance at all, since while they both definitely had their reasons for being in the program and trying their best, it wasn't for love of ballet but always for someone else. It made the entire competition to be the best fall flat, because they didn't want to win to join Opera necessarily (except this rang true for Kate later, but her desire for this often intermingled with her desire for some guy), they just wanted to finish someone else's dream/impress someone who wasn't there/etc. And lastly, both Kate and Marine struggled with a lot in their goal to be the best, but since their motivations weren't there for me, the struggles fell flat as well. Marine's struggle with eating rang truer than Kate delving into drugs, but it still didn't fully work for me because the development felt sudden. Their friendship also felt flimsy at the best of times, and I didn't quite understand how it had ever really worked out (their promise to each other also conflicted heavily with their individual dreams of winning, so I'm not quite sure how they ever rationalized this to themselves?).

Honestly the ending was solid in the sense that it concluded their individual character arcs and involved them finding their actual dreams and going for it, but it felt way too miraculous. Both of them just suddenly had solutions to their major problems and that seemed to be that. I also feel like there never was a good reconciliation between Kate and Marine, and the story focused more and more on their relationships with others near the end, so it feels a little half-finished in that regard.

Overall, this book just didn't work for me, as I feel like it tried to take a little too much on without necessarily having characters strong enough to carry across those problems well. I did enjoy the setting and the descriptions of dance were nice, but it just wasn't enough to make up for the rest for me.

I have always been fascinated with the life of ballerinas. Ballerinas are so elegant and poised and walk with confidence and discipline. But not everything is what it is seems. Bright Burning Stars by A.K. Smalls was a perfect of example of what life is really like off stage. In this book readers are exposed to the cut throat competition of students who will go to any length to achieve the coveted spot of principle dancer.

The characters were well defined and developed. As a reader it was easy to sympathize with each dancer and left me wondering if just how far I would go to get something I wanted that bad. Would I betray friends? Would I align with someone I knew was bad news? Would I cover or even worse commit a crime?

Smalls does a great job of combining mystery, love, passion and desire. I would recommend this book to anyone that likes a little dark with their love story.