This was more of a 3.5 star read for me. Unfortunately, it was very similar to most other stories about ballet and ballerinas. Though it was a bit stereotypical, it was still an entertaining story and a very quick read.

This review was also published on Goodreads.

I had high hopes when I ordered The Ballerinas. It was touted as Dare Me meets Black Swan meets Luckiest Girl Alive, and I loved my many years taking ballet lessons. Unfortunately, I was let down. First of all, this is NOT a thriller as advertised, and bears no resemblance to the referenced novels and movie. Secondly, it was quite a slow read. I would categorize The Ballerinas as character-driven women's literature. I would only recommend it to readers who absolutely love ballet because it is a good reflection of the art.

The book follows two timelines. It's about three hugely women who meet at the prestigious Paris Opera Ballet as adolescents in 1995. Delphine and Margaux entered the ballet corps together and are best friends. Lindsay is from the United States and meets the other two girls when she secures a spot at the POB. Lindsay is an amazing dancer, which quickly makes her of interest to Delphine and Margaux. She is also super ambitious and willing to do whatever it takes to move up in the ranks. The novel then jumps to September 2018. Delphine is 36 and returning to the POB as a choreographer. She has been living in St. Petersburg, Russia having left Paris after something big happened between the three girls and caused her to give up her soloist spot at the Ballet. Delphine is hoping to renew her relationship with her two former besties, but Margaux and Lindsay are now both married and time has moved on.

The Ballerinas includes great detail about the lives of dancers and information about certain ballets. It is a deep dive into ballet, female friendships, ambition, and talent. My thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me an eARC in exchange for an honest review. This was a well written novel but just didn't capture my imagination.

About 60% in, the story took a completely different turn from what I was expecting.
There are two timelines, one where Delphine is remembering the past with her two best friends, and the present when she is back in Paris as a choreographer. Each woman has been through a lot, but Delphine to me was particularly unlikable. I know in most thrillers, the main characters aren't really people you like, but this isn't a thriller. You do want to find out what happened when the girls were young that caused Delphine to leave, but it just didn't have a strong effect on what happened later in present timeline. Delphine is so wrapped up in her own self all the time, that she has managed to push all her friends away by not taking the time to listen to them or care about their problems. I had a friend like this once, and I was not as forgiving as Lindsay and Margaux.
There were so many things going on in this story, that it was like the author couldn't focus on one major theme she wanted to get across. There's the brutality and ageism in ballet, men using women, this mystery of what Delphine did to Lindsay in the past, Delphine's current hopes for her career, her desire to rekindle friendships, and multiple scandals. I felt like I was getting whiplash.
Margaux was actually my favorite character, and I was sad about what she was going through. Thankfully she was getting support from Julie, and in the end it seemed there was hope that Delphine is figuring out how to be there for her friends. Lindsay grew on me, too.

I wish there had been more focus on the scandal that revolved around one of the POB members, because that would have been a powerful statement, but maybe it is more realistic that it was there and then gone, and that those who knew about it and didn't do anything about it didn't get punished.

3 friends and their lives as professional dancers. The story got into some of the issues that I was honestly unaware of. The lengths dancers will go for ultimate physical perfection, striving to be the best, their driving ambition, and the artistry. Loved learning about it through this story. Kept my interest until the last page.

I found myself putting this book down quite a bit it’s the beginning, but around halfway through it really picked up and I couldn’t stop reading!

Three ballerinas on the same, yet different paths; best friends but competitors. When ballet is your life, you surround yourself with those doing the same - for friendship, love, and life. And the ballerinas in this novel do just that, while also trying to live as individuals. With pieces of growing up, Me Too, and friends that become family, The Ballerinas was a slow start, but finished well.

The Ballerina’s is the story of three women who basically grew up in the Paris Opera Ballet company. Delphine, central character, Margeaux and Lindsay. None of the characters are particularly likable, though they are quite intense.
While I found the book an interesting read it was not one of my favorites. I found the storyline a bit confusing at times and without explanation as to what and why were happening.
Thank you #NetGalley., #Ballentine Books & Rachel Kapelke-Dale for the ARC.
My review is strictly voluntary.

“The Ballerinas” was such an interesting reading experience for me 🩰

Thank you to St Martins Press for my gifted eARC and finished copy of “The Ballerinas” by Rachel Kapelke-Dale. It came out Dec 7.

Set against the backdrop of the Paris Opera Ballet, this is the story of friends and professional ballerinas Delphine, Margaux and Lindsay. Thirteen years after Delphine walked away from her soloist role with POB, she’s back in Paris to choreograph a ballet that she hopes will jump start her choreography career. But she’s brought with her plenty of baggage from the friends’ ballet days in the early aughts.

This is the cover blurb that absolutely sold me on wanting to read this: “The Balleri-
nas explores the complexities of female
friendship, the dark drive toward physical
perfection in the name of artistic expression,
the double-edged sword of ambition and
passion, and the sublimated rage that so
many women hold inside-all culminating in
a twist you won't see coming.” You get all of that in this book.

For the first 80 percent of this book, I’d have told you I was enjoying it. It was good. Not life changing, but I’d have recommended it to people who like ambitious female character-driven books. But the last 20 percent is a tour de force. Wow. The last portion of the book was so good that I gave this five stars on Goodreads.

A few notes: This book is dark. It’s a slow burn. I would not call it a thriller. The characters aren’t likable. I am fascinated by Bookstagram’s obsession with likable characters. I find characters written to be likable to be very boring and not very genuine. I like gritty, complex characters. These women let you into their darkest sides. If you’re a Megan Abbott fan — and especially liked Turning Point — you’ll like this one.

I am not a big fan of books written about ballerinas. I don’t like reading about it. So, I surprised myself when I decided to accept the review invite from the publisher. Something about the cover and the blurb called to me and said, “Read me.” Well, while it wasn’t my favorite book in the entire world, it also wasn’t my most disliked book either.

The Ballerinas is a story about friendship, ballet, and secrets that people keep. Delphine, Margaux, and Lindsay are students at a ballet school associated with the Paris Opera Ballet. Best friends, they also are rivals. Then an accident happens, and the girls each go in different directions. After 13 years, Delphine is back in Paris. But some secrets are threatening to come out. What secrets are there? What did Delphine and Margaux do 13 years ago, and why are they afraid to tell Lindsay?

The Ballerinas had dual timelines, with each told from the POV of Delphine. Usually, I don’t mind when a story goes from past to present, but in this case, it annoyed me. The storyline would switch after something significant was revealed, or something was about to happen. It could happen several times during a chapter, and honestly, it was exhausting to read.

All that switching also affected the flow of the book. It made it very choppy, and I had difficulty getting into the story. I also had a hard time connecting with the characters. The pacing was also affected by this. It was a medium-paced book, but it felt slower than it should have been.

I didn’t care for Delphine. She came across as a shallow, self-centered woman who didn’t care who she hurt to gain fame as a ballet choreographer. She 100% deserved every dressing down that she got in the book.

Margaux wasn’t much better, but I did feel bad for her. She felt so much guilt for what happened that night (the night of Lindsay’s accident) that it affected her on a personal level. She was also dealing with infertility. That was one of the more painful scenes to read. It was raw, authentic, and millions of women can empathize with her.

Out of the three, I liked Lindsay the most. She was more down-to-earth than the other two. But then the events at the end of the book happened. They left me going, “What the heck?”. It was like she had a personality change. I was left shaking my head and wondering, “Why?”

There were some memorable secondary characters in The Ballerinas. Stella was my favorite, and that is because she tore Delphine a new one at the hospital. She called her out on everything, and that caused Delphine to reevaluate her life. Jock (or Jacques) was the other memorable one. He was a sleazy, skeezy jerk and deserved everything that he got coming to him. I did have hopes of his character turning out differently, but oh well.

The mystery angle of The Ballerinas was interesting. I did figure out what happened pretty early on in the book. Still, it did make for an exciting read.

There was a slight suspense angle in the book also. That happened towards the end of the book, after the incident with Jock. It wasn’t enough to get my heart pumping, but it did keep my attention. Of course, the aftermath of it was fascinating.

There are trigger warnings in The Ballerinas. They would be statutory rape, revenge porn, cancer, infertility, abortion, domestic violence, adultery, and murder. So, I would strongly suggest not reading this book if any of these triggers you.

The end of The Ballerinas was… exciting, and it was a rollercoaster. I did not see what happened with Daniel and Lindsay coming at all. That did take me by surprise. What also surprised me was how Delphine suffered zero consequences for what happened. I remember thinking to myself, “If this were in America, it wouldn’t have gone that route.” I liked the small epilogue and thought it fitted for Stella.

I would recommend The Ballerinas for anyone over the age of 21. There is mild violence, language, and sex.

I thoroughly enjoyed this one! I will have a list of content warnings at the end of this review in case you want them (they will include spoilers). We follow Delphine in present day (2018) at 36 years old coming back to her home in Paris, where she spent most of her life in the ballet. Now she's working as a choreographer following the end of her relationship with famous Russian choreographer Dmitri. She hopes to find her life exactly like it was before she left 13 years ago with her two best friends Margeaux and Lindsay.

However, life isn't that simple. We follow Delphine learning that just because you age doesn't mean you grow up. I loved the feminist route took where although yes it was 100% the focus in the end, it didn't feel like it was preaching. It felt like it was just, here's some real world subtlety about what feminism really is, and how the patriarchy continues to work against us in our daily lives.

CONTENT WARNING:
abortion
gaslighting
cheating
miscarriage
sudden death
death of a loved one (illness)
nonconsensual sexual videos
blackmail
physical injury descriptions (light gore)

Thank you to St. Martin's Press, Rachel Kapelke-Dale, and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest
review

Previously published at https://www.mysteryandsuspense.com/the-ballerinas/

“I think the real tragedy of life is that we’re always the people we were and it’s only our outsides that change. And then one day we wake up to find we’re the only adults left in the room-but inside, we’re all just children pretending.”

—from “The Ballerinas”

I was excited to read The Ballerinas, but it isn’t exactly what I thought it was. The novel is character-driven, with several unique but not particularly likable characters. I would go as far as to say that none of the characters are nice people. Perhaps it is their upbringing, or perhaps it is their profession; but it certainly makes for interesting reading. The author focuses on three women – Delphine, and her two friends Margeaux and Lindsay, who grew up training in the Paris Opera Ballet.

This book is not a thriller, as described. There is not necessarily a twist, though there are bits and pieces throughout, that will give the reader pause. Unfortunately, there is no explanation behind them, which becomes confusing to the reader. At times, those bits are never mentioned again. This is a character study about young women growing up in a competitive environment and female friendships that last through the years. Or do they? The Ballerinas is not a cheerful story, nor is it a mystery that has a satisfying ending. Delphine, the main character, is a 37-year-old woman, who is both interesting and complex. The book flashes back to three timelines in her life; her teenage years; her as a young adult; and finally, we see her in her late thirties as someone who is regretting her life choices.

Delphine has returned home to Paris, to choreograph a ballet called Tsarina. She has been living in Russia for 13 years with Dmitri, who has minimalized her, cheated on her and derailed her career. When she finally leaves him, she returns to the comfort of her home, which is the Paris Opera Ballet, and her long friendship with Margaux and Lindsay, who grew up in the ballet school with her. While she expects that their friendship will pick up right where they left off, this is not what happens. There are too many years missed. This book does an excellent job analyzing women’s friendships and how they can be destructive, rather than fulfilling. It also takes you behind the scenes of what it is like to grow up as a ballet dancer and all the horrible things it does to your psyche, but also physically, the toll it takes on your body.

As the reader, I became frustrated with Delphine’s selfishness but also, her naivete in situations where she should be wiser. The alternating timelines became confusing as they introduced different scenarios. Kapelke-Dale seemed to drop a plot point and then never go back to it. We were promised a twist and after finishing the book; I am not really sure what the twist was. The reader is left wanting more. For example, Delphine drops all of her things in a trash can at the airport.

“At the nearest trash can, I left everything I was holding tumble out of my arms. My St. Petersburg life, taking its place among McDonald’s wrappers and day-old newspapers.”

I wanted to know why, and I wished the author would have elaborated on what Delphine was trying to do.

Despite some of these issues, I found The Ballerinas an intense, interesting and sometimes heartbreaking novel. Rachel Kapelke-Dale is extremely talented and has written a truthful portrayal of friendship, innocence, and what motivates us as women.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This one has mixed reviews here on bookstagram – and even with my book besties who I trust for good reviews.
At a very high level, this is the story of three young ballerinas training at the Paris Opera Ballet for limited spots in the school. The story is told on dual timelines: 1. Present Day: one of the girls, Delphine, left the Paris Opera Ballet to follow her Russian boyfriend to St. Petersberg to become a choreographer. She comes back to Paris to pick things up with the other two ballerinas who stayed in Paris. 2. The Past: This timeline follows the women coming of age in ballet.
I thought it was a great debut for two reasons.
1. Rachel Kapelke-Dale writes about desire in a way I have never experienced. Desire to be the best, desire to dance, desire to be small, desire for recognition, desire to be admired, sexual desire – it is all so well done in this novel. This is one of those things that is very hard to explain, but it had me hooked.
2. I could have never written this book. It’s such a slice of life that is so unfamiliar to me and likely many readers. In this way, it reminded me of the masterpiece Migrations by Charlotte McConaghey.

What didn’t work for me: The Me-Too story line was a bit forced because of the vigilantism. That’s all I’ll say about that because no spoilers on this account.

The beautiful cover drew me in to this book. The first half of this book was great- three best friends who dance at a prestigious dance academy in Paris. I loved reading about their friendships and the going’s on at the dance studio. We learn that Delphine and Margaux have a secret from their past that affected Lindsey, the third member of their group.
Halfway through the book, it turned a little #MeToo. It went off the rails for me. The secondary character Stella, Delphine’s neighbor, was my most favorite character in the book. However, she didn’t get enough tine and Delphine treated her poorly. When we found out the “secret” it wasn’t as dramatic as I thought it could be.
I would like to read another book by this author in the future. I was given a complimentary copy of this book by NetGalley and the publisher.

"The Ballerinas", by Rachel Kapelke-Dale, is a dual-timeline novel, centered mainly on Delphine, a young French woman, ballerina in her youth, and ballet choreographer in her adult life. The novel alternates from her youth years in Paris, training as a ballerina alongside her best friends, to the present day, choreographing her first ballet in Paris, after returning from a long time stay in St. Petersburg.. There are secrets and drama, as there would be among (teenage) girlfriends, and present-day Delphine hopes to make up for the past by doing right by her friends now in the present.

This book appealed to me because it was marketed as mystery/thriller, but I found it more of a fiction/ drama, than a mystery/thriller. While there were some elements of suspense, I felt like they got lost in the character drama and the story carried on for a bit too long for me to really care about any of the characters. What I really did like were the bits of information about ballet sprinkled here and there throughout the story. They were definitely interesting, and were probably my favorite part of this book. Also, the cover is beautiful.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the e-arc in exchange for my honest review.

First off, I am always a sucker for a ballet story. The Ballerinas totally delivers on that aspect.

The author perfectly captures the agony, stress, and ambitiousness of the entire ballet world. She also does a great job of illustrating the love/hate relationship that ballerinas often have with each other.

You make friends, and you trust them with your secrets. But the competition is fierce, and they will stab you in the back to get ahead. And you will do the same when it comes to getting a promotion.

Where the author lost me a bit was as Delphine tried to find her new path when she returned to Paris.

Midway through, the tone of the novel changed. The second half felt more like a MeToo indictment on the ballet world. I get her point as it is made quite obvious.

But ballet is an art that relies on men being strong and women looking fragile. That’s the beauty of the dance. Part of the illusion is the fragility because the women have to be just as strong as the men.

I suppose that might have been the author’s point. Life imitates art. Delphine, Margaux, and Lindsay all find their inner strengths in spite of being bullied or degraded by men.

But it feels forced in places. Some of it is heavy-handed. The “twist” mentioned in the blurb came out of nowhere. Frankly, it took the story in a direction it didn’t need to go. Especially so, considering how the victim had helped one of the characters earlier in the story.

I would have preferred the women be victorious without the incident. I think both Lindsay and Delphine could have succeeded without the tragedy. And Delphine’s ballet for the two of them would have been the ultimate victory.

Overall, the build-up was slow and everything happened quickly at the end. It almost felt like the author knew it was going long and needed to wrap up. I

But it was still an engrossing read, and I would recommend it. This review is based on a digital copy of the book from St. Martin’s Press.

So finally I am getting to review this novel. This novel was really interesting from the first page it took my attention. I have literally 0% idea about the life of ballerinas (at least till the point I read this novel). But I was always fascinated when I saw them dancing, something that make you stop breathing and just watch with amazement.

This novel was about the friendship between three girls, was it genuine? I think yes, although at some points Delphine is realizing she always paid more attention to herself than to her friends. But I think that is normal for anyone (being a bit selfish). Delphine always concentrated her whole life around the men she loved. When she was in Moscow she served Dmitry like a servant, not really realizing her own talents. In Paris, she always watched Jock and was a good girl, so he would like her. But none of these men was worth the love and effort.

I also didn't much like Margaux, she was a bit strange character for my taste. The only true people in the novel were Lindsay and Stella. Who also loved Delphine dearly. Delphine lives most of her live in the shadow of her mother, trying to beat her to be the star of POB. Only when she decided to be a choreographer she does something for herself.

What I wondered for the long time was what really Margaux and Delphine did to Lindsay to ruin her when they were teenagers and I was a bit disappointed there, when the revelation came. But the novel again picked up the pace at the end, we face here so many ugly things that happen in daily life - cancer, abortion, death.

It was for me a thriller in real sense, but it was a pretty good novel. Well done author!

I chose The Ballerinas as I know absolutely nothing about ballet and was hoping to get a glimpse of their lives, both on and off stage. If this is a realistic glimpse that lifestyle isn’t for me. I found the main characters, Delphine, Lindsay, and Margaux, the three young ballerinas, to be such insipid characters. All the male characters were perfect candidates for the Me Too movement. The story held my interest, although at times I found it difficult to follow given the constantly changing timelines. I did appreciate the ending.
So many topics were briefly touched on which seemed to weaken the impact. I do think if there was more of a focus on one or two of them - perhaps relationships and/or pregnancies - would have helped tighten the focus.
Many thanks to Rachel Kapelke-Dale, St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for affording me the opportunity to read an arc of this recently published book.

Thank you so much for a copy to read and review! While this book was not for me, I could see how some would love it. I was thinking there would be more romance and thriller to it than there was. Overall it was ok just not my cup of tea.

Summary:
Moving between the trio's adolescent years and the present day, The Ballerinas explores the complexities of female friendship, the dark drive towards physical perfection in the name of artistic expression, the double-edged sword of ambition and passion, and the sublimated rage that so many women hold inside––all culminating in a twist you won't see coming, with a magnetic cast of characters you won't soon forget.

Review:

The Ballerinas is everything I was hoping for in an art-fuels-passion-fuels-rage novel about the pain of the ballet. Dancers, like all artists, suffer immensely for their craft—punishing their bodies and spirits in the name of art.

Dueling timelines drag the reader back and forth from present to past until the final twist is unveiled.

I truly did not see it coming and am stunned.

I wanted to like this one and was hopeful for this with the comparison to Black Swan and alluding to this being a mystery, suspense, and/or thriller type of story, but there was little to none of any of those types of story here. This was a story about the world of ballet, about the weird and obsessive perspective of ballerinas with these 3 ballerinas who meet and become friends in the 90s when they're attending ballet school together. There are two timelines and it goes back and forth between the timelines with the 3 friends and what goes on in their lives.
They each go through things and try to deal with their experiences while living their dreams or trying to achieve their goals with dance despite their age, health, or circumstances. I wasn't impressed with the event that did happen at the end of the book that was the only part that could have been considered suspense or otherwise with the one murder.
It was somewhat interesting, but not enough to keep my attention and keep me wanting to read it to see what happened. I read it but had a hard time pushing through to the end to finish it. This book just wasn't for me. Thanks so much to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for letting me have the chance to read and review this story. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Every time I think I find a promising book about ballerinas, I only find disappointment. While I am certain that there must be companies out there that are nightmare-inducing horrors, it's exhausting to recycle that trope over and over. This book is better than average, but still includes violence, cutthroat competition, and sexual encounters that don't quite ring true. Add all that together with the big "secret" not being quite so big after all, and you'll find a decent enough book that non-dancers will enjoy.