This book marks two intense, gorgeous, and grotesque novels about ballerinas I've read this year - more than any other year, I'll say! (The other book being Megan Abbott's The Turnout.) I couldn't help but draw similarities and differences between the two, as both feature women in ballet who are just out of their prime - but in many ways, the books couldn't be more different.

The Turnout takes place in New York City, two former ballerina sisters running their own school of dance, with a horrendous builder coming in and ruining everyone's lives. It's a more typical psychological thriller, with gradual breakdowns, a web of lies, and stunning twists delivering punch after punch. The Ballerinas is much more subdued, more literary fiction than thriller, exploring childhood female friendships, loss, and the journey of maturing. It can be poky in parts, but is mostly soft and pensive, sad and withdrawn.

Our main character, Delphine Leger, is a former Paris Opera Ballet-trained ballerina in her mid-thirties who returns to Paris in order to choreograph her first solo ballet, a work about Tsarina Alexandra. Her two bestest-of-best friends from childhood and POB's Academy, Margaux and Lindsay, are both still working as ballerinas. Lindsay in particular is still hustling, working so hard to finally become a "star," the formal highest role a ballerina can achieve.

The book weaves between three basic timelines: the trio of girls in POB's school, almost ready to graduate and join the coryphee (corps) of dancers; Delphine as a young corps member meeting Dmitri, a Russian choreographer who sees Delphine as his muse; and present-day, Delphine choreographing her Tsarina ballet featuring Lindsay as the titular Alix.

The book mostly focuses on the girls' relationships when they were young, how carefree (well, as carefree as young ballerinas reaching for the highest roles can be) and tight-knit they were, in sharp contrast to their disjointed, almost broken relationships in the present day. They're all in different places in their lives, with Delphine having disappeared to St. Petersburg for several years and not stayed in touch, not even attended her two friends' weddings. Margaux has personal problems of her own having to do with substance addiction and fertility issues, and Lindsay is as maniacally driven to get promoted as ever. Over the course of the months it takes for Delphine to choreograph her ballet, which morphs into different forms according to the whim of what the POB board wants, these relationships ebb and flow and culminate in something somewhat aligned, even somewhat like the aforementioned The Turnout.

I really enjoyed the writing - I thought it was beautiful and real, and although Delphine frustrated me at times, she was mostly a relatable, reliable main character. Seeing these three young women in such a unique, insular, different bubble than what I know was fascinating, as diving into any niche, highly competitive world usually is.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press for the ARC via Netgalley!

I'm pretty sure that any of us who grew up with the movie Center Stage are aware that being a ballerina is almost never cute and pink the way people envision it. Most often it's dark and twisty, full of jealousy and very promiscuous. This book embodies all of the dark and twisty parts and I loved it.

Delphine returns to the Paris Opera ballet as a choreographer partially to reunite with her two best friends Lindsay and Margaux, plus her childhood crush Jock. Nothing goes as planned, everything goes horribly wrong, but yet they actually turn out to be right.

I loved the dynamic between the trio, how they did root for each in this hostile environment but nothing was ever as honest as it may have seemed. But even at their worst moments they still leaned on each other for support.

The way Kapelke-Dale writes about the ballet, the movements, the music, the emotions of it all is also really beautiful.

Thank for @stmartinspress and @netgalley for this complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

The Ballerinas releases Dec 7th!

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The synopsis of this book really intrigued me. Growing up as a dancer I love dancing and I love thrillers so I was so excited to read about two of my favourite things. This book is a slow paced burn. The beginning of the book was hard to get into. I had to restart the book from the beginning a couple of times. However, once you hit the middle of the book it hooks you and then you are in it. I was so invested in the characters and I was kicking myself for not committing the first time I started the book. I really enjoyed this!

Three friends schooled in the art recount their physical and mental exertion to be the best ballerinas in the Paris Opera Ballet School. The competition to win soloist and rank has had ramifications into their adulthood. Reunited after many years apart, they soon unearth the schools scandalous secrets and forge ahead with a plan to destroy everything they worked so hard to achieve.

The Ballerinas provides incredible insight into the life of a top-notch ballerina. The first half of the novel was incredibly slow, but the second half leaped into the drama. The duel timeline easily provided a sense of what these girls endured in school and beyond. This novel is TRUE slow-burn.

A stunning debut novel with a WOW ending!

Thank you St. Martins Press and NetGalley for the complimentary copy.

This book was amazing and everything of the sort. I will definitely be reading more from this author.

Loved this one! It was totally transportive, and an excellent picture of girlhood friendships. At times I found the pacing a bit odd, especially towards the end.

Actual rating: 3.5/5

Over a decade since leaving her spot as a soloist with the Paris Opera Ballet and moving to St. Petersburg, Delphine returns as a choreographer. Keen to reconnect with Margaux and Lindsay — friends with whom she'd ascended the ranks of the ballet school — and right a glaring wrong from the past, Delphine begins to discover much has happened in the time she's been away and making things right won't be nearly so simple.

It's been ages since I hesitated quite so much on a rating.

On one hand, The Ballerinas tries to handle a lot at once and packs its second half with a great deal of somewhat disparate subjects that don't necessarily come together very smoothly. The pacing is very inconsistent and while I don't generally mind a slow start, this did make the book feel very unbalanced.

On the other hand, there was a lot that I did like. The ballet, for one. The ambition, the artistry, the cost of it all. It's clear a great deal of care and research went into portraying the inner workings of a ballet company. There's also a heavy focus on the complexities of women, their relationships with each other, and patriarchal systems they exist within.

I do have to say that the synopsis of this book feels misleading. Despite comparisons to Black Swan and Dare Me, I'd very much hesitate to call this book a thriller. At its core, The Ballerinas is a meditative character study of a novel, focusing mostly on Delphine, the maturing she has yet to do, and the messy relationships with the women in her life.

Ultimately, I enjoyed this. It's a strong debut novel and touches on compelling themes. The pacing, side characters, and general focus of the novel could've been improved upon, but I'd still definitely recommend this book and would read more from the author in the future.

TW: misogyny, body shaming, disordered eating, adult/minor relationship, cancer, infertility, alcoholism, mention of miscarriage, blood, graphic injury, sexual abuse, revenge porn, abortion, death

3.5 stars

What I liked:
-I felt this book provided an accurate depiction of life as a professional dancer. The physical and mental strains of this lifestyle were clearly explained and felt very real. The politics that go on, the determination to be the best, to compete against your friends and enemies alike, all seemed to fit with what I know and have heard about the world of dance.

What I didn't like:
-at times, the book felt very slow moving and a bit boring.
-most of the characters (with the exception of Stella) were very unlikable.
-the first half was slow and gave a lot of backstory, while the second half picked up the pace but felt a bit all over the place.
-this book is marketed in such a way that you expect a thriller. But it is not a thriller. At all.

I wouldn't call this a bad book. I just think it should be marketed more as contemporary fiction with a feminist message as opposed to a thriller (it's been compared to Black Swan and Luckiest Girl Alive). While it wasn't for me, I'd still recommend that others with an interest in the world of ballet still check it out for themselves.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the arc of The Ballerinas by Rachel Kapelke-Dale.

I read this book and I enjoyed this book but could I tell you what this book is about? No, there is so much that encompasses The Ballerinas that it's hard to sum up what exactly happens in this novel. A story about ballerinas encompasses years, friendships, relationships and death and Kapelke-Dale shows these off in a very lyrical fashion but it also flies by so quickly that I think a good reread would be needed to really feel like I could make sense of what happened in this book.

Delphine returns to Paris after an extended absence and struggles to reunite the nearly lifelong friendships she has with current ballerinas at the Paris Opera Ballet. This story encompasses the three girls childhoods and adulthood, jumping between times to tell a story that you can see coming but the violence of it shocks you as you read it. I enjoyed the beginning of this story and while I understood the ending I thought it perhaps came out of nowhere except for the novel's heavy themes of feminism and how a sport that is so heavily reliant on strong capable females seems to only celebrate the men.

Overall I enjoyed this book and want to read it again to see what else I can gather from this book.

The only aspect I really liked about this book was the ballet the main character was choreographing about the last tsarina of Russia. I didn’t care fo any of the characters in the book. They were all pretty miserable and pitiful.

An interesting look behind the scenes of a dance company. Trying to be friends with your competition presented a very interesting dynamic between characters. I was intrigued enough to want to know what happened to the characters, but I can't say I liked any of them. The switch between the past and current worked okay, and the suspense built very slowly. The end was a surprise and moved at a much faster pace than the beginning of the book. I found the story interesting. It was definitely a darker story that didn't leave me feeling particularly hopeful about people. I received an advance copy from NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving a review.

I was drawn in by the cover of THE BALLERINAS and intrigued by its description, especially, "Dare Me meets Black Swan and Luckiest Girl Alive."

The book follows ballerina Delphine Léger both in the present day (well, 2018) and in the mid-90s on. Then, she was a student at the Paris Opera Ballet academy training to become a star; now, she's back at POB with her two closest friends from her teenage years/early 20s, Margaux and Lindsay. It's not an effortless reunion though, she and Margaux did something to hurt Lindsay 14 years earlier and have kept that secret since.

I really liked THE BALLERINAS' exploration of the costs of ambition -- in particular, women's ambition. What do we put ourselves through, what's expected of us, and what must we put up with? What makes it worth it?

The setting and scenes were interesting; I wasn't quite feverishly turning pages, but I did read this one in two days. The audiobook narrator did an excellent job getting me into Delphine's head. Once I began listening, I switched between the audio and text (I don't think you can go wrong with either).

Note: I've seen THE BALLERINAS described as a thriller and crime fiction; to me, it read as more contemporary fiction (...in which the reader's told of a killing on page 1).

Set in the highly competitive and intense Paris Opera Ballet—three students grow up together—-all heads hearts hands feet and toes poised for the accolades and fame that will come when they achieve soloist, then principal roles. Delphine - “the nice one” - is the daughter of a legendary Parisian ballerina. Will she pay the price to follow in her mother’s [pink satin] toe steps? I loved Delphine’s point of view - such an honest narrator. She holds secrets, but doesn’t taunt the reader with them, trotting out the surprises gratuitously in a climactic storm as some writers do. Kapelke-Dale times the shifting narrative beautifully, beginning with childhood then adeptly with adult flashbacks. The dialogue is so well done … even as there are French, Russian, and English speakers. Of course- we read in English, but it’s quite the vicarious trip to Paris (with a bit of St. Petersburg).

Delphine’s friendships with Lindsay (the beautiful, talented, ambitious American) and Margaux, (a darker, edgier Parisian we never fully grasp) are highly engaging. I don’t know when I’ve read more authentically depicted female relationships. It’s an adult story, not romanticized or patronizing. I could not put it down. I was surprised in so many ways!!

#netgalley @novels_with_narci

The first thing I have to say is that this book was exhausting to read. Many times I felt like just putting it down & not finishing but I pushed on.

This went from the teenage years to early thirties of three supposed best friends. They truly acted no different as teens than they did as adults. These girls were not nice at all. Delphine was probably the worst & the story is told from her pov.

The thriller part just wasn't there. The whole thing was just very anticlimactic. I wish this book matched what the synopsis indicates but it just didn't

**Received ARC through NetGalley. Voluntarily reviewed**

This story brings you behind the scenes to the reality of ballerinas. It shows the hard work and good luck and the rise and fall and the lifestyle. It's also a story involving #MeToo, sexual abuse, abortion, and murder. This book was okay but not wonderful, not a standout to me. I did like peering behind the curtain to see the women behind the ballet, but I wasn't overwhelmingly impressed with the story. 3 stars.

Starting ballet lessons as a three-year- old and continuing until I was ten, I spent a lot of time watching the older girls and hoping and dreaming that one day I could put on a beautiful pair of toe shoes with beautiful satin ribbons. I was excited to read The Ballerinas. Many memories came back to me as I read and met Delphine, Margaux, and Lindsay. I was drawn to the author’s mention of Dame Margot Fonteyn who I saw perform one time in her later years. Kapelke-Dale created an interesting story by using two time periods. The first time period started in 1996 and moves forward to present day 2018 (the second time period). None of the men in these girls’ lives were good people. I loved the character of Stella and wish she had more of a presence in Delphine’s life. As I have been thinking about this story for a week, I think I would like to read it again knowing that this book is really a character study. My thanks to St. Martin’s and NetGalley for an ARC of this book. The opinions in this review are my own.

Delphine, Lindsay and Margaux are The Ballerinas. In flashbacks, we see their complicated friendship from the age of twelve set in the world of Paris ballet.

Now, Delphine has returned in her thirties to choreograph a new ballet with her old company, the Paris Opera Ballet, after a long stint in a Russian ballet company. She selects Lindsay as her principal dancer despite her advanced age. Was she selected for her remembered talent or because of something in the women’s shared past?

Complicated female friendships and romantic relationships are sprinkled throughout the plot. But the requirements and sacrifices of being a real-life ballerina are at the heart of this novel. I, personally, dodged a bullet by only taking a year of park and recreation ballet at the tender age of 5. No one works harder than ballerinas at their craft as graphically detailed here. I could never have managed that much selflessness for art.

Overall, if you like ballet and serious women’s fiction, you will love reading The Ballerinas. 4 stars!

Thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

Unfortunately, this book was not for me. If it weren’t an ARC from NetGalley, I probably would’ve DNF’d it. None of the characters, with one exception, were likable at all, both the women and the men. That would have been fine but the first half of the book also was boring, and the time jumps were too frequent, making the story very choppy. The publisher billed this as a mystery/thriller and it most definitely isn’t one. It’s more a story about female friendship and men who take advantage of women. This book is only 304 pages but it felt much longer. I bounced between the audiobook and the ebook for this title. Even the excellent narration by Ell Potter couldn’t save this story for me.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to an advance copy of this audiobook and to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advance reader copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

The title of the book, The Ballerinas, implies this book will be about dancers and bsllet. While those certainly were key plot elements and themes, that was merely the part of the iceberg visible above the surface. What lay beneath is a vast and complex view inside a multitude of different relationships from mother/daughter, life-long female friendships, lustful teenaged desires. Internal conflicts with personal identities, just to name a few. Love, redemption, guilt, desire, passion, desperation, selfishness, betrayal. I swear the layers of this book peeled away like the biggest most complex onion. I was transfixed by this novel, by these relationships. Although I never quite connected to any of the characters in a profound way, I really didn't need to. I simply needed to watch the dance. And it was mesmerizing.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest opinion. It was a pleasure.

Delphine has recently returned to the Paris Opera Ballet, eager to begin work on the new production she is choreographing. While Delphine is no longer a professional ballerina, she is still immersed in the world of dance. In Rachel Kapelke-Dale’s debut novel, The Ballerinas, we are taken deep into a world that makes up the childhood dreams of so many. “When I grow up, I want to be a ballerina.” While the world of professional ballet is full of beauty, grace, style, and intrigue, it surely has a dark side, as well.

Through the main character, Delphine, as well as her dear friends Stella, Lindsay, and Margaux, Kapelke-Dale makes an incredibly powerful statement about how women are treated - not just in the world of dance, but in the world - period. Not afraid to tackle some tough situations, she wrote a beautiful story while sending a vital message.

I thought the book was excellent. Well-written and thoroughly-researched, Kapelke-Dale also knows how to create characters with depth and personality. No one in this novel is perfect, but Delphine and her friends are women I want to go to brunch with, intelligent women who know who they are and what they want.

This one comes out December 7, 2021. I highly recommend you pick it up, especially if you’re a woman in your 30s or 40s who may be realizing that life isn’t quite panning out the way we hoped it would. This book is a great reminder to never lose sight of who you are and what you’re capable of. Also a good reminder of the importance of brunch. Don’t ever go too long without going to brunch with your crew.

Thanks to Rachel Kapelke-Dale, St. Martin’s Press and Netgalley for this ARC in return for my honest review.