Not what I expected at all... but I got totally wrapped up in it! This isn't really a thriller or mystery, as it's been marketed; rather, it's a pretty thorough character study with a couple of surprises here and there. Despite a somewhat slow start, once things got moving about 1/3 of the way through, I was totally in. Sure, it sometimes felt like the author was throwing everything at the wall and grabbing for the connections, but it WORKED. Also, as a former dancer, the descriptions of the ballet world weren't too far off the nose. It's extreme, sure, but it's not out of the realm of possibility-- especially for a book with this tone.

Thank you Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the eARC.
This was a book that I found fascinating, not knowing a thing about the world of ballet. Lots of in-depth information that made me wonder why anyone would want to become a ballet dancer! So tough: the pressure, rivalry, anxiety, the misogyny, the tortuous toll it takes on bodies and minds - it sounds unbearable.
We go back and forth in time with the three friends at the heart of the story. One, Dolphine, leaves the Paris Opera Ballet to go to St. Petersburg, returning to the POB ten years later as a choreographer, while her two friends are aging (not a good thing for female ballet dancers!) and clinging on for their lives and careers.
I didn't think it was really a mystery, more a historical book about ballet, friendship and the unending hardship of being a professional female ballet dancer without much chance of ever becoming a prima ballerina. Well written and obviously well researched it made me feel sad at times, but I couldn't put the book down, it was an intense read. Definitely recommended!

The writing style and language of this book was incredibly natural and enjoyable, and the author included beautiful and vivid description of ballet movement. It is clear that the author understands the world of ballet very well, but I’m taking a star off because I’m not sure how well the author understood her characters or her plot.

There were quite a few moments where I thought ‘whoa, why would that character do that?’, and not in a surprise plot twist kind of way - more like an out of character, confusing like of way. It’s like there wasn’t enough time to explain enough about each player before they did something shocking, and I think maybe the reason is that there are just too many characters that feel like they would be labeled as secondary characters. There’s one primary and probably 7 secondaries, between 1-3 true tertiaries, and then a few background players, which is just a lot of ‘important’ people in a 300ish page book.

I’m also not sure exactly how one would describe this plot because there are so many pieces and climaxes in the book that I truly couldn’t tell you what the story was about - other than a group of ballet friends and their various crises.

That sounds like a lot of criticism but overall I enjoyed it other than the ‘well that escalated quickly’ moments, so overall 4 out of 5.

I was a little disappointed in the Ballerinas. I was waiting for more of a mystery. I did enjoy learning about the ballet life and how it engulfs your world if you are a ballerina. The story follows three friends Delphine, Margaux and Lindsay through their lives as professional Ballerinas. But Delphine has a secret that will change the friendship. In my opinion the secret was not that astonishing.

Thank you NetGalley for giving me a chance to read and review The Ballerinas by Rachel Kapelke-Dale.

Once I finally got into this book (about 15% or so of the way along), I really got into it. I felt like I was part of the friend trio, yet still an outsider-an audience member-looking in at their dance. The plot lost me at the way end. According to my Kindle it was for the last 8% of the book. I thought the ending was forced and unnecessary, but until then, I was fully immersed in their ballet world. I do think that some of the dance (and heck, even the French in general!) terms and references are not easily accessible to all readers. Other than that, I very much enjoyed this fun, sometimes thrilling read.

This book details the lives of Delphine and her friends, Lindsay and Margaux, who studied ballet with her when they were all younger. Delphine left Paris 14 years earlier to move to Russia with her boyfriend/husband Dimitri and has now returned to choreograph a ballet at the Palais Garnier Opera House. She hopes to reconnect with her friends and establish her career in Paris. However, life has continued to move forward and her friends have changed, as has she. Delphine struggles with this as she essentially thinks of her friends in terms of what they were like when she left them.

I was not a fan of this book and struggled to continue with it because I didn’t like any of the characters. I felt like it took forever to get to what the big secret was that was hinted at in the teaser of the story. To be fair, maybe part of my problem with this book was the going from the present day to the past as that is something I don’t like.

I felt the author did a good job in writing about ballet and the struggles to have a career in this field, especially since I know nothing about this area. I appreciated that she made Delphine a little more self-aware towards the end, but still did not like the book.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This novel was compared to a movie and tv series, which is pretty apt. The experience of reading was a lot like watching a gossipy, maybe over-dramatic tv show - and I don't mean that in a bad way! Lots of flashbacks made each scene feel immediate and fresh, and the setting in a high-stakes French ballet school made each action fraught with importance. The novel was also a complex exploration of female friendships and relationships, and the ways that men can have a harmful effect on both.

Although I am not very familiar with ballet or anything about, I enjoyed the story. The physical and mental stress the dancers are under is just unbelievable. The cover of this book is beautiful and what initially got my attention. So happy when you can judge a book by its cover as in this case. Wonderful story and very thought provoking.

The Ballerinas by Rachel Kapelke-Dale is about a trio of ballerinas who meet as students at the Paris Opera Ballet School. The story follows them through their 30s, an age when the typical professional ballerina is preparing to retire. The story does a superb job of immersing its readers into the competitive and demanding world of Ballet. It gives readers a glimpse of the real life of a ballerina not just the glamorized version most people know.  Although the story has a bit of drama and a thriller ending,  it is mostly a character study of the three friends and how their friendship changed after a single incident. I highly recommend this book.  It's an intriguing read, especially for those who want to learn more about the world of 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 so much to Netgalley and St. Martins' Press for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

Overall, 2.5/5 stars.

Pub date: 12/7/21
Published to GR: 5/30/21

<i>The Ballerinas</i>, Delphine, Margaux and Lindsay, meet as 13 year olds at the Paris Opera Ballet School. Their friendships ebb and flow and the timeline picks back up in their late thirties, right back at the Ballet School.

I feel like this novel had a lot to unpack (and did - mostly in the second half) but a lot of it felt rushed and sloppy. Delphine is a choreographer now, and has returned to the POBS to debut <i>her</i> first ballet, after being overshadowed by her lover for the past 7 years in Russia. In the midst of this, she gets tangled up in a sex scandal that breaks open a large #metoo movement within the ballet school.

Meanwhile, her friends have huge issues going on in their own personal relationships that have been skirted over. Margaux is the least developed of the three friends and even at the end of the novel, her story is still left very one note. Lindsay’s marital issues as well as her personal struggles (not to mention her consistent use of sex/her sexuality to get what she wanted since her teens, which was never mentioned into adulthood) come crashing to the forefront, literally, in the last chapter.

And again, we return to Delphine and her constant struggles to find someone with whom to connect consistently, and we trace that back to her mother - a famous ballerina who never wanted children.

<i>The Ballerinas</i> has so much great content and I read the novel in one sitting. I just felt that that content could have been put together in a better manner for both the reader and the characters.

I don’t know what I expected when I started the Ballerinas but it wasn’t this.
To a certain extent it should have been since the main characters tells us what happens in the first few sentences, but it wasn’t.
In a time where women’s rights are constantly under attack, where revenge porn is ignored or treated like the women should have known better, where people are trying to out women back in a box we broke out of decades ago, this book holds up as more than interesting fiction. It’s a beautiful feminist novel about women finding their strength.
The characters are flawed, which makes the work even stronger.
I loved The Ballerinas. It’s not my usual preference for a book, but it was outstanding all the same.

Wow! As someone that is of French descent and has lived with the french mentally for most of my life. This book is spot on with some of the toxic aspects of french culture. French women are thin, natural-faced, gracious, elegant, determine, judgemental and bull-minded. That's just naming a few but the number one thing is that they always try to keep face in any given situation. Which is extremely well described and seen with all our female characters. France as a setting is usually very romantic. So I really appreciated that this book showed the toxic behavior that can be seen in French communities. (I'm not saying that all French people are toxic but the French mentality can be.)

I loved the competitiveness of ballet. It's a performance art that I haven't read much of but this book convinced me to read more.

Plot-wise it's pretty slow-paced especially the first 30%. of the book. But, when things unravel it was pretty entertaining.

Overall, this book depicts a side of French culture that isn't always shown and has a slow and steady plot that will keep you entertained.

Thank you, NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Rachel Kapelke-Dale for the arc.

I am always drawn to stories that feature ballerinas. I don't know why that is. Because I had to quit ballet when I was a kid due to a scheduling conflict? But much like when I buy tickets to the ballet, I almost always remember around half-way through the show that I don't actually like the ballet. If I'm being honest, it bores me. But if someone writes a book about ballerinas, I'm there. And there have been a few ballet-based novels that I've absolutely loved. There is such a brutality in ballet that invites a novel like this to be written. But this one... I can't put my finger on why it didn't work for me, but I think the timelines were so similar, I kept losing my footing (and my interest waned). The book became exhausting to keep track of, the characters all too similar to distinguish (although maybe this is a metaphor for being in the corps) and their motivations withheld or unclear until a "reveal" that wasn't particularly satisfying. Rachel Kapelke-Dale is clearly a good writer -- better than many, from a writerly perspective, in this genre -- who was familiar with the world she wrote about, yet I didn't feel this book came together. This book will sell well -- ballet! thriller! -- but for me, it just didn't gel.

The Ballerinas

Set amid the elite Paris Opera Ballet (POB), The Ballerinas tells the story, in converging timelines, of three ballet students. Delfine, Lindsay and Margaux, the inseparable trio throughout their youth, learn the hard way that ambition and jealously drive wedges through even the strongest friendship, culminating in Delfine fleeing to Russia.

Told in Delfine's voice, The Ballerinas alternates chapters between present-day and stories of the girls' journey through the POB, from students to corps members to soloists in the Company.

But this isn't just another dance book. This is a strong feminist novel exploring friendship, relationships, choices, ambition, the ownership of a woman's body, and the gaze we are forever, unconsciously, adjusting ourselves to suit. Ballet is simply the backdrop as the spotlight is shone on these issues.

In contrast to many other novels set in Paris, the author *didn't* wax lyrical about the Tower or other typical tourist spots; this wasn't a tour guide sort of book. Rather, the reader was dumped straight into the scene, with the narrator treating the reader as if they already knew the locations. It was refreshing.

*I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review*

A wonderful novel about the not so beautiful side of the ballet world. It's beautifully written, provocative, and unflinchingly delves into some surprisingly dark places - the detree to which women in the ballet are diminished, the damage done to bodies and minds and relationships. I will never view the ballet the same again.

I was excited to read this one based on the professional ballet setting, which always reminds me of one of my favorite movies, Center Stage. Unfortunately the book fell flat for me. I didn’t particularly like any of the main characters, and it was hard to keep track of the timeline. It was billed as a thriller and after numerous mentions of “what we did”, I have to say I was in disbelief when I actually found out what it was - not at all what I expected and frankly, just boring. The story was all over the place and many times I wanted to just put it down, but I muddled through. Two stars because I did like the ballet setting.

I received an advance copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

A real page turner. I loved the cast of characters and how the story melds the past and present together.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowoing me to review this title.

I found this book to be less of a thriller and more a study on long term friendships. It's about growth and change, It's beautifully written, engaging, and touching.

A thrilling character driven read . This novel certainly took me back to a time when I was taking ballet lesson and was obsessed with being a ballerina . Delphine the main character is returning to Paris to work as choreographer on her own ballet. Here she meets up with her lifelong friends and fellow dancers Margeaux and Lindsay.. Both have their own stories and tribulation . This a wonderful absorbing novel set in the world of ballet with mysteries and secrets