Based on the book description I expected a different kind of story. I expected it to be full of mystery and suspense. Well, it was not that way. There are parts of the plot that are suspenseful, but I would not classify this book in that category.

The Ballerinas was a slow build for me. The story centers around the friendship between three women, Delphine, Margaux, and Lindsey, who met in their childhood as they enter the Paris Opera Ballet to pursue their dream of professional ballet dancing. A lifetime journey in a highly competitive environment where there is not much room for error if one's dream is to become an étoile (a star, the maximum title available in the company), an achievement that only a few will enjoy in the short-spanned career of a dancer.

The story takes place in Paris, and one gets to do some literary travel along the way. The main character here is ballet. Be prepared to Google some terms if you are not familiar with them or check the archives of the great masters of ballet (Baryshnikov, Nureyev), something I enjoyed. We learn about the expectations and demands of the trade, the insane amount of discipline and sacrifice women put in this female-centered world.

Their friendship is obscured by an event in the past that changed the course of their dancing careers. Delphine narrates the story and-in two alternating timelines-we learn about their early friendship and current-day friendship. Delphine has returned to Paris after spending 13 years in St. Petersburg. As the plot develops, we go deeper into their struggles, their current and failed romantic relationships, the internal conflicts in their friendship, and the weight of the secret that the women carry after all these years.

The Ballerinas is an intensely character-driven story, full of emotional moments for these three women as they each face the inevitability of getting older, facing the end of their dancing days, and what their friendship means to each other.

This is the kind of story that stays with you after you finish the book. (Plus, that cover is GORGEOUS).

This book surprised me and was impossible to put down. While ballet is very much the world of this book it’s not necessary to be a fan to appreciate this story. This story is very much Delphine’s story, which while tied to ballet, is more than that. I usually complain about flashbacks but the author does a brilliant job of telling this story in two timelines. As we follow Delphine in the modern timeline we also have flashbacks to her younger self that continue being told in chronological stories that continue moving forward. Those flashbacks explain the backstories of Delphine, her ballet life and her friendships. Delphine is very imperfect and her life reflects that. The pacing and slow reveals were perfect. I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Thank you Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC of The Ballerinas.



**************possible spoilers*******


This novel is not just about the world of ballet or the ballerinas that inhabit the world of ballet.
It is a novel about mothers and daughters, friends that are sometimes toxic, friendships changing, me-too survival, patriarchal oppression and male/female relationships, female/female partnerships, abortion, attempts to conceive a child, loneliness and love.
If you read this list and wonder how can one book pack all of this into one novel, do yourself a favor and just read it!
I loved this book for so many reasons. First and foremost because I am a woman of a certain age like the protagonists of this novel and have felt so many of the feelings and faced some of the same issues. I loved this book because these women are fighters and survivors, sometimes stumbling and falling but always picking themselves and each other up. I loved this book because these women are courageous, attempting to break the glass ceiling in their own ways. Finally, I love this book because it made me feel. I cared about the characters and wanted closure for them.

I received an ARC of "The Ballerinas" by Rachel Kapelke-Dale from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

To be honest, I was kind of confused by the Ballerinas. It took me a minute to write this review because I didn't quite know what I felt or what I wanted to say. I feel like this should have been a book I would LOVE or really like, but I just didn't connect with it that way. I think I had misconceptions going in that I was going to be more of a thriller/mystery type book than it ended up being. Maybe that is where it went wrong for me?

I appreciated the friendships that were built around the ballerinas, but overall just could not connect with these characters. When I can't connect with characters, usually a book doesn't resonate with me.

Such a beautifully written book, with a compelling story about friendship, ambition, and how far one would go regarding both. I ADORED this book! I seriously will now read whatever this author writes. It’s THAT good!

The Ballerinas
A Novel
Rachel Kapelke-Dale ( author)
St. Martin's Press
This review is from an Arc from Netgalley
The novel follows the best friends Delphine, Margaux and Lindsay who meet in their teens as dancers in the Paris Opera Ballet. They become fast friends.
The Ballerinas explores the complexities of female friendship and the author immerses the reader in the world of ballet ,body images, sacrifices and pain and they are aware of always being on show .
Delphine harboring a secret abandoned her prestigious soloist spot at the Paris Opera Ballet for a new life in St. Petersburg ..
Delphine returns to the Paris Opera Ballet after having been away for fourteen years. She goes back to choreograph a new dance in the hopes of finally making a name for herself. She also has hopes of reconnecting with her long-time ballet best friends, Margaux and Lindsay. Delphine discovers that things have changed and she clashes with the administration on what ballet to present.
The focus is on the three friends , their jealousies and darkly competitive nature, their quest to become professional ballerinas and reach perfection at the Paris Opera Ballet.

I really wanted to fall in love with this book. The cover is absolutely beautiful and I loved the premise. I was hoping it was more a dark book like Black Swan.

There is a dual timeline going back and forth between the present and the past. But, I found that the past was really being told from the present. I was getting confused as to which timeline I was reading whether it was really the past or the present.

The Ballerina's is marketed as a thriller and compared to Black Swan. This was not the case at all. I was expecting to see more twists and dark turns but we saw nothing of this. There were some events that were thrown in to be somewhat shocking but nothing that was to me marketed as a thriller.

The feminism and friendship themes in this one fell pretty flat and was disappointed. I also was pretty annoyed with the main characters and her actions/behaviors.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for my eARC of "The Ballerinas" in exchange for my honest review. I will be posting a bit of a longer review of the novel on my YouTube channel @fueledbyangela and my TikTok @angiechureads in a few weeks.

This book will be published December 7, 2021!

Rachel Kapelke-Dale's "The Ballerinas" follows ballerina turned choreographer Delphine as she returns to the Paris Opera Ballet after leaving for a new opportunity in St. Petersburg. The novel depicts the years leading up to Delphine's decision to leave Paris and her present day as she struggles with a secret involving her two closest friends, Margaux and Lindsay. Delphine must deal with the expectations put upon her choreography work from her time in St. Petersburg as well as working to restore the closeness she had with Margaux and Lindsay prior to leaving.

Before I start, I will say that I don't believe that this novel is being properly promoted as it's being promoted as some sort of mystery thriller when I think it's more of a drama and coming of age. Despite going into this thinking that it would be more suspenseful than it was, I was still captivated by Kapelke-Dale's writing and the world she has crafted. As a kid, I was completely enchanted by ballet. I loved watching "The Nutcracker" during the holidays and had always wished I had done ballet as a kid (I did have fun in taekwondo though!). I was very pleasantly surprised by this novel because on top of being able to dig deep into the cultural and social world of ballet in Paris, there was the added layer of female friendship.

The novel is simply and beautifully written. Kapelke-Dale dives into how far one is willing to go for perfection in the name of art, the intricacies of female friendship, and my favorite, the anger that a woman holds. This novel was such a fun and tense read. While it is not a thriller, I found myself tapping on my reader to figure out just what happened to this trio of ballerinas and to find out what Delphine will do now as a choreographer. I loved the descriptions of the ballerinas and their movements. What easily could have been a drag to read through was engaging.

Without giving away the story, I will say that when Delphine has that moment of self-reflection, I was cheering for her. Her character growth felt grounded and when it comes time for her to make a decision, I was more than proud of her. I loved how women are depicted in this novel so so much. All of these women are intelligent, talented, ambitious, passionated, and in their own ways, flawed. I appreciated that Kapelke-Dale's depiction of these intense and ambitious women didn't involve punishing them for those traits. So often in a lot of current novels, ambitious and intense women are punished for being "too much" or they're regulated to just being ambitious. Not in this novel; the women all have their own motivations and stories and I just love that female friendships and women are celebrated.

As a whole, this novel was a delight for me. There were some spots in the novel that I felt were too word heavy and definitely could have been edited down (hence the docked one star) but in general, I enjoyed this novel.

I definitely recommend picking this up once it is published. It'll be a good holiday read and will have you calling/texting your best friends.

The Ballerinas is gripping but not in the way one would expect. Anticipating a thriller, I was surprised to find it read more as a women's fiction and drama. The Ballerinas confronts the emotional world of three ballerinas as they tackle the struggles of being a woman in ballet, losing and gaining relationships, and taking back control in world where you feel powerless.

The story follows three ballerinas, Delphine, Lindsay, Margeaux, striving to become professional ballerinas. Set in Paris, this alternating timeline makes the story very character driven. It allows the reader to have a deeper connection to the characters and witness the struggles each woman went through. The writing was extremely well done. The details surrounding the ballet world shows Rachel Kapelke-Dale did her research. The pacing was was great and held my attention which can be difficult with alternating timelines.

Overall, I enjoyed this unexpected story. I would recommend The Ballerinas to ballet enthusiasts and readers of fiction who enjoy strong character driven stories.

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

This book didn't live up to my expectations. The blurb hints it as a type of thriller with the mention of Black Swan, yet this is nowhere near to a thriller. I was highly disappointed.

This one unfortunately did not work for me. It has such a unique premise but the story quickly become boring for me as I found it way too slow paced.

I really enjoyed this story. I enjoyed how it moved back and forth in time between the characters. It left me, as the reader, with more information to how the characters personalities are now and why.
I learned a lot also about the life of a dancer.
I will be recommending this book to others.

There is a lot going on in this book and it took me awhile to get to the point of the book. I thought it was a thriller. It was not. It's more of a character driven story of three friends who are passionate abut ballet. All three friends have their own problems that unfold as the story progresses.

At times the pacing is a bit slow and the storyline drags. It took me a month to finish. It was easy to pick up and jump into the world but also easy to put down.

The cover is amazing and is what drew me in. That plus the idea of the setting being in the ballet world.

***Advanced copy obtained from St. Martin's Press via Netgalley**

Dance, competition and friendship within the Russian ballet. Interesting read but wouldnt necessarily be my first choice as I'm not as passionate. and drawn to the dance world as others may be.

Thank you to Netgalley and publishers for this advanced readers xopy in exchange for my honest review.

Step inside of the world of Russian ballet, unlike anything you could imagine! This is a story of friendships, career & romance through the life of a professional ballerina. I enjoyed this book very much!

I never expected that ending!...No spoilers here, but the story certainly took a different turn at the end. This is a story of three Ballerinas from the Paris Opera ballet, the oldest Ballet school and company, in the world! It's a complicated life, being a dancer in a company of that caliber. As a dancer/choreographer myself, I was immediately drawn to this book on Net Galley. It was an interesting story, a bit hard for me to get into at the beginning, but I kept on reading. What I walk away with is, this story of friendship between three really close friends and Stella, who I wish I had known. It's a good book! Thank you to author Rachel Kapelke-Dale, for her love of the Ballet, writing about it with great respect, as well as the women in it. I get it..and I LOVE the feminist side ALOT! Ms. Kapelke-Dale nailed it!

Thank you to Netgalley for the pub and St. Martin's Press, as well.

A beautifully written story about the bonds between friends in a a fiercely competitive world. Parts of it dragged a bit, but overall The Ballerinas is a fast, engaging read.

I can very much see how this wouldn't appeal to everyone. I've always had a fascination with ballet (I recognize this is fairly common) - I am not a dancer, AT all, but I'm always drawn to their stories.

Something about the single mindedness obsession with perfection speaks to my soul and draws out the very worst parts of me
and puts them right in the stories. This book did that exceptionally, weaving together multiple timelines and compelling characters to create a story of feminism, obsession, and power.

I loved it and can't believe it's a fiction debut!

Side note, I read the author's memoir a few years ago and loved it - can't believe this is by the same person!

Slow starting but it really picks up and keeps you not being able to put it down. This was a really good story about the strength of women against men who only want to control them. I enjoyed the multi timeline, it's the best one I've read in a while, and seeing all the growth in Delphine and Lyndsay and Margaux was quite moving. Definitely not a thriller though which suits me better.

Ballet has always stirred me. It's captivating. I love the soft turning, leaping, stretching art of it--the kinetic emotion. I marvel at the rigorous physicality and technical skill it requires from its dancers, for they represent, they portray, true beauty in motion. I can't dance myself so naturally I gobble up anything that features it, whether that be in film or literary form.

I was happy to get my hands on this book as a result.

Interestingly, though the summary seems to imply The Ballerinas is a thriller like that of Black Swan, I found it to be more of an intricate character study than anything. Not what I was anticipating, mind you, but still compelling enough to keep my eyes stuck to the pages, reading.

Told in a dual nonlinear timeline, the plot follows three friends - Delphine, Margaux, and Lindsay - over the course of fifteen years. Time stretches from the early 00's all the way to 2018, featuring the girls when they first meet as young hopeful dancers at the Paris Opera Ballet and then later when they grow into adults who share their troubles, fears, passions, and failures with one another. It's a deft and incisive look into the world of dance. Into the hearts, the struggles of ballerinas.

What I liked about the story was how it cast off illusions about ballet as well as about life and people. It showed how cutthroat the ballet industry can be, the way jealousy and rivalry in addition to the unquenchable desire for success can create disaster, perfidy, betrayal. Even among the closest of friends. It added gravitas to the weight of long held secrets, too. It also highlighted the prevalence, pervasiveness, and oppressiveness of misogyny in its many different forms.

Unfortunately the world we live in, not just this book, is rife with men who like to objectify women, who minimize their wants, their dreams, who seek to silence their voices, stripping them of autonomy because its not in line with how they think or what they believe they deserve as men, and the author wasn't afraid to underline the insidiousness of that. To demonstrate what happens when a man makes a woman feel as if she needs to make herself smaller, more docile, compliant. She shows the damage that causes, how it can dismantle her sense of self. The way it can reverberate into rings of repressed, unbridled anger which continue to multiply over time.

As part of this takes place during the era of Me Too, the author also has her characters push back against the predatory male in ways that were refreshing as well as necessary. There's a kernel of "women won't accept this treatment any longer" energy about it, which is a sentiment I will cheerlead until I die.

The competitive yearning for star quality Delphine, Margaux, and Lindsay all sought after in their own way reminded me a lot of Center Stage. The tone of this was thornier than that of the movie, though. More menacing. Heavier, too. It let readers see a slice of the real physical emotional burdens that ballerinas carry on their shoulders. Like how they're chasing youth while also chasing down incredible pressure. Like knowing their profession is skewed more toward men, toward their power. Like the sacrifices that had to be made in order for female ballerinas to have a chance, just one chance, at being successful. I don't mean only sacrifices with regards to their bodies, either, but also those that have to do with time, practice, relationships, marriage, and kids, that sort of thing.

Overall the narrative unwinds in slow spools to reveal the girls' secrets and longings. Little by little, it unveils their successes and failures over the years to arrive at a startling conclusion where passion meets with catastrophe and friendship meets with protectiveness. By the end, I promise you you'll be on your toes, doing pointe with held breath anxiety and curiosity. You'll be bending and twisting and stretching yourself thin until you know what happens to Delphine, Margaux, and Lindsay.

Even though I enjoyed reading this dark interpretation of dance and female empowerment, it wasn't always as cohesive as I would have liked. The time jumps could be a little jarring. That yanked me out of the flow at times, making for a jaggedy leap from one intense moment to the next, dimming the impact, but for the most part I was too absorbed by how much the characters' pasts were haunting the present to care overmuch.

That said, I think anyone with an interest in ballet or ballerinas will find a lot to twirl about in readerly fascination with this one!

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC.