Because I previewed and enjoyed Rachel Kapelke-Dale’s The Ballerinas last year, I was invited to read her upcoming novel The Ingenue as well. Unfortunately, my ability to fully appreciate The Ingenue was affected by the fact that I’ve a few too many books recently where women are mentally, physically, emotionally, and sexually abused, most often by the men in their lives. As was the case in The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna, the description for The Ingenue couched things in vague-enough language that it isn’t really a bait-and-switch but it also isn’t clear how much of the story is going to focus on some form of sexual abuse. And the central character’s gradual shift in how she understands and views that crucial relationship from her past is a key part of her journey so I also understand why it was approached that way, but given the nature of that relationship and how triggering/upsetting it can be, I feel like the description should at least have a reference to Lolita or something – alluding to it being set post #MeToo is simply not enough for the nature of the “complicated history” at the center of the story. Looking beyond my personal disappointment that it wasn’t the story I was hoping it would be, The Ingenue is very effective in its depiction of how those who’ve been manipulated and abused can narrativize their experience in ways that help protect themselves. And as with The Ballerinas, the ending may not be entirely realistic, but it’s probably more satisfying because of that.

Saskia Kreis was blindsided by her mother’s death. It wasn’t particularly sudden but her mother didn’t want her to know about her diagnosis and concealed it from her. Another unexpected blow comes when Saskia and her father learn that their large family estate was left, not to Saskia but to one of her mother’s colleagues, Patrick. In trying to untangle the web of her mother’s intentions and deciding to fight the will that would see her family’s legacy given away, Saskia must confront the painful truths of her past relationship with Patrick as well as the complicated relationship she had with her mother. Questions of agency, legacy, and obligation weave a net that threatens to trap Saskia as a version of herself that she isn’t sure she wants to be. She’ll have to make up her mind before others make the decision for her.

The Ingenue is the kind of book where I kept getting frustrated, needing to take a break after every chapter to cool off. It’s not badly written – if it were, the situations and characters wouldn’t evoke such a visceral reaction. It’s the fact that too much of what happens is all too real – the gaslighting, the complicity, the looking the other way, and it’s infuriating. Saskia’s processing of the truth, her reactions and subsequent actions are often just as frustrating even as they make perfect sense for the character and what she’s going through. Towards the end of the novel, as her actions veer in a certain direction, they are both satisfying and eye-roll inducing. As with The Ballerinas, the novel’s conclusion is gratifying in its wish-fulfillment (though it’s also, easily, the least realistic element of the novel).

There were several plot lines that I had hoped to see more directly wrapped up. In particular, I was intrigued by Saskia decision to take on the task of finishing her mother’s in-progress manuscript. However, that was just one of several subplots that fell away as the narrative focus grew increasingly narrow. Again, it was realistic in its reflection of Saskia’s increasing inability to focus on anything but Patrick, but since that whole thing was so frustrating, I was disappointed that details I was more genuinely interested in were dropping away left and right. I’d gone into the novel thinking the central emotional focus would be on the mother/daughter relationship and to see so much of its exploration happening in the shadow of Patrick was… not really something I had much patience for (and the shifting political situation in the US around women’s rights this year has only made my frustrations worse).

The Ingenue will be available December 6, 2022.

Saskia Kreis is the latest in the line of a prominent Milwaukee family. Her mother's ancestors made their fortune as one of the early beer companies and, with their wealth, built a family estate that had passed down through the family through generations. So when Saskia's dies unexpectedly, Saskia assumes she will inherit the house. Upon her return to Milwaukee for the first time in many years, she is surprised to learn that her mother did not leave the house to her in her will, but instead to a man that Saskia has a complicated history with. Saskia is outraged and hurt -- and determined to find a way to keep the house in her family. As she searches for the reason for her mother's change of heart, she must reexamine her past, including her relationships with her mother and father, how a childhood spent largely studying piano impacted her, and her relationship with the man who she is now fighting for her mother's house. The more she learns, the more she reevaluates everything she thought she remembered about her past.

This was a well-crafted and highly engaging story exploring interesting themes, including family relationships, the highs and lows of being considered a prodigy at a young age, and the powerful forces of revenge.

Highly recommended!

I liked this book. Tough topic that gave me the Willie's. I was not sure how she was going to get resolution and closure but like where the author went. A bit of a surprise but satisfying.

A story about a young woman coming to terms with the abuse she used to consider love and her relationships with herself and her mother. I found this book to be very depressing at times. You couldn't help but feel the hopelessness of Saskia in present day and feel it amplified by the potential of her in her youth.

The ending, to me, felt justified and a truly natural conclusion. 3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

This story was an intricate weave of the main character’s past and present, as she works through the implications of her first love, and the power of family. Rachel Kapelke-Dale does not disappoint with this book. It is so well written, so strongly feminist, and delivering important messages to all women. If you read and enjoyed her story, The Ballerinas, you definitely want to read this story!

The Ingenue by Rachel Kapelke-Dale earned its way into my Top 5 of 2022. What an amazing story. Saskia is a character who is going to be impossible for me to forget because of her complexity. Her characterization is in-depth and immersive. I felt like I truly knew her. Seeing Saskia’s innocence shattered is infuriating. Watching her revelations about what truly happened in her past was heartbreaking and lead to what I thought was the perfect ending for who she was. As the book goes on, you see the deconstruction of who you thought she was and it is done masterfully. I wish I could read this again for the first time. Thank you @stmartinspress and @netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read an early copy.

Last winter I reviewed Kapelke-Dale’s second novel, “The Ballerinas”, and found it to be very average. I particularly didn’t like her usage of flashbacks in that book. “The Ingenue” is clever enough to not make the same mistakes that “The Ballerinas” made. It’s a much-improved book, though it’s not quite as brilliant as I’d hoped it would be, either.

The blurb advertises this book as “My Dark Vanessa” meets “The Queen’s Gambit”. I can totally see the influence of the former, but I don’t see any of the influence of the latter. I have a bone to pick about blurbs that mislead consumers. It reads to me as false advertising.

The structure of this book is one chapter of the present (the book is set in 2020), one very short interlude that is an excerpt from Saskia’s (our protagonist) mother’s feminist fairy tale retellings, and then one chapter that’s set in a year from Saskia’s childhood and teenage years leading up to when she’s 18 years old. The chapters set in the present serve as the setting for the central plot, the chapters set in Saskia’s past serve to give us insight into who Saskia was when she was a child, what she went through during her teenage years, and how she grew to be the person she is in the present. Essentially, how she grew from being a piano prodigy and society ingenue to a woman who no longer plays the piano and doesn’t know how to interact normally without people at all. And the feminist fairy tale retellings, written by Saskia’s mother, serve not only to show the juxtaposition between who Saskia and her mother were but also to underscore Saskia’s need to lead the charge and to be the one to save her home and slay her own dragons.

There is also an interesting and possibly overlooked theme running like a light melody on top of the main themes in this book: the privilege of the rich, white, and old money people. Saskia’s home, which she has always thought would be there if she needed to come back to it, is more of a castle than just a house. The amount of money for upkeep, cleaning, property taxes, and more is staggering, and these are all numbers adult Saskia (even at over 30 years old) never bothered to take into account and never thought about. The home has been in their family, passed down through her matrilineal line, since it was first built with money from a very successful beer brewery. It’s old money, for Milwaukee. Saskia had private piano tutors, which she outgrew quickly due to her brilliance on piano. She went to an expensive private school, which she took for granted. She wrecked an expensive car. She didn’t want to go to college because she figured she could just stay at home and record piano albums forever without trying to further her skills or networking in the industry. She simply felt as if money and a career should just fall into her hands. It wasn’t until she was 18 and she realized her life was stagnant that she decided to do something about it, and even that was a token effort. She just wasn’t prepared for a life without everything being handed to her.

Nonetheless, when it counts, this book takes that feeling of privilege and ownership of that beloved castle and the past that still haunts Saskia and channels it into the indignant rage of a woman raised by a feminist mom that says, “How dare you think you have a right to what is mine after what you did to me? What could you have said or done to my mother to make her agree to give away the one thing that’s our family legacy and would’ve helped my father set himself up for his retirement? Something is fishy here, and it’s not the lake we live on.”

It’s not a perfect book. I’ve said that before. It is very slow to start. It has a fabulous prologue to give us a taste of what’s to come, but then it took me a very long time to become engaged with the novel. I felt there was some unnecessary subplot action going on that could’ve been cut, but it could’ve been worse. But it’s certainly an interesting book, even if it’s a bit of a dark one.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for granting me access to this title.

File Under: Coming of Age/Suspense Thriller/Amateur Sleuth/Literary Fiction

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What happens when you are a child prodigy who is compelling and pliant at 11? What happens when a trusted family friend takes advantage when you are 14? How does this change your future to have a childhood stolen by parents and a predator who each want to show off your talents and use you? In The Ingenue by Rachel Kapelke-Dale, we meet Saskia, who, at her mother’s death, must walk through her beloved home and her not-so-beloved memories. There is so much to wade through, beginning with the Elf House and her right to inherit, only to have it bequeathed to her predator by the mother who should have protected her. Cutting her daughter out of the ownership of the house becomes the ultimate slap in the face for Saskia from a mother who failed at so much. Yet it is the major victory when Saskia realizes a more powerful message in her life story than she ever realized. What happens when being the best is all that matters? What happens when the princess renounces her crown to have adventures, only to discover she doesn’t know what to do when the adventures end? Another compelling story by the author of The Ballerinas. Ms. Kapelke-Dale writes women who are fragile yet have an inner strength that perseveres. #TheIngenue #sexualmolestation #predators #justice #overcoming #fight #prodigy #survivor #RachelKapelkeDale
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I received a complimentary copy of this book. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martins Press and the author for the opportunity to read this book. Pub Date: December 6th

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3.75+ stars

I have mixed feelings about this book. I definitely noticed commonalities between this novel and the writer’s last one, and in both cases, although I did enjoy the books, I didn’t *love* either one as much as I’d hoped I would. The story was in-depth and interesting, though, and I quite enjoyed the snippet of feminist-revisionist fairytales at the beginning of the chapters. I like the writer’s style, but going into her next one, I just need to remember that her stories tend to be heavier than I expect.

Side note: the cover design is gorgeous!

Wow- that was an intense read!

Rachel's writing is absolutely stunning and she really is a master story-writer. I loved the ending and how the past was slowly revealed to make the current events mean so much more. The character development was incredible along the way and the interweaving of the fairy tales that her mother wrote really added so much dimension and depth to the story.

It was much darker than I expected and I wish I would have had some content warnings going in. This would have been a PERFECT read for me if it weren't for the unnecessarily graphic details of the sexual assault.

Thank you to St Martin's Press for the ARC. This will be available on Dec 20th.

The Ingenue follows the story of a former piano prodigy, Saskia Kreis, who returns home after learning of her mother's death and discovering that the family estate that she had expected to inherit was left to a man who Saskia has a very complicated relationship with. There's a lot to unpack with this story and I don't want to offer anything that would lead to a spoiler.

The story moved a bit slowly for me, however, it was still a very important and moving story to be told. I liked Saskia's character and found her to be likable, even relatable at times. Reading her story, it was easy to feel everything she was going through. It was easy to be transported into her mind.

While not my favorite read, it was still a good book, and an important one to read.
Thank you, St. Martins Press and NetGalley for the eARC!
3.5/5 stars

This story about Saskia, The Elf House and coming to terms with the past completely swept me away and I couldn’t stop reading. One of my most enjoyable reading experiences of the year. I loved the chapter starts with the feminist fairy tales and want to read an entire book of those. That said, this is gritty and serious and I absolutely loved it.

The Ingenue by Rachel Kapelke-Dale ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A big thanks to @netgalley and @stmartinspress for the eARC. You’re going to want to get this one when it comes out next week!

Talk about layers and complexity. This story was about growing up, moving on, complex family dynamics, grief, revenge, being in control of your own story. It was balanced and heartfelt and never once seemed like it was too much.

I was enticed by the description of the book when it was compared to My Dark Vanessa. Readers watched the main character grapple with her “relationship”; however, she was not portrayed as just a victim. Female empowerment themes ran deep in this one. From the feminist fairy tales to our main character’s development, empowerment was a steady thread.

I took off a star because I felt like it got a little far-fetched, and some plot points just disappeared into the unknown. But I really enjoyed the layers. I just really recommend this complex read!

Full confessions: I hated "My Dark Vanessa". I originally thought this was going to be another teacher/student relationship trope, and at its' core it was. There were times when I wanted to just shake Saskia because she was whiney and entitled, but having been a "Gifted" child who grew up to be completely normal, I understand her to an extent. The content was hard to read, because it always is, but it was still a decent story.

This is an intense read. It’s a character-driven novel that has plenty of suspense. The decaying Elf House makes a fabulous setting, lending dark, gothic undercurrents to the story. The plot is well-paced for the most part, though I thought the final part of the book dragged a little. The gradual revelation of the reality behind Saskia and Patrick’s relationship was deftly handled, and her relationship with Evie and Mike has depth as well. The effect of having been a child prodigy on Saskia’s psyche rings true as the story progresses. The writing is excellent, and my only quibble is with the ending—I’m just not sure how I feel about it—but it will certainly stay in my mind for a long time!

I really liked The Ballerinas and I enjoyed this one as well. The author has such an ability to personalize her characters and really let you feel their emotions.

Beautifully written and I look forward to her next. Thank you Netgalley for my copy!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

While this book took a bit of time to get into, and the subject matter was a bit unsettling, I did end up enjoying the novel.

This story follows Saskia, who after her mother passes, thinks she is set to inherit her childhood home. Instead, she finds out that her mom has left it to a man from her past, someone that she has been trying to put behind her.

Not understanding why her mom would leave such a big gift to practically a stranger, Saskia finds out that her mom knows a lot more about her past that she would ever want her to know.

The story is told in a couple of different time frames - Saskia's childhood, and the present - and portrays a mother's love knows no boundaries when it comes to protecting her child.

I’ve been a fan of Rachel Kapelke-Dale since reading The Ballerinas last year. I was over the moon to see she had a new book this year and I was not disappointed! Think dark fairytales, set in the most gorgeous old, historical house. My idea of the perfect kind of book! I loved it and really enjoyed following along the characters stories. I think it would be fun to read more history on the house and get to know some of Saskia’s ancestors in potential future books by this author! I can’t wait to see what this author writes next!

Many thanks to NetGalley, St Martin's Press and Macmillan Audio for gifting me both a digital and audio ARC of the new novel by Rachel Kapelke-Dale, beautifully narrated by Stephanie Willis - 4.5 stars!

Saskia, a former piano prodigy, returns home to Milwaukee from NYC after her mother's death. She expected to inherit The Elf House, a mansion passed down to the women in her mother's family. However, she finds out that her mother's will left the house to someone in Saskia's past and she is both devastated and livid. She begins digging into the reasons for her mother's bequest while in turn exploring her own past and secrets.

I really enjoyed the author's debut novel, The Ballerinas, and found this one very intriguing. Each of the chapters begins with an excerpt from Saskia's mother's feminist fairy tale books, which were very relevant. We go back into Saskia's past to explain her present frame of mind. There's lots to delve into in this book - family secrets, mother/daughter relationships, how being a prodigy with all its expectations does to a child, the people who take advantage of that, and the "MeToo" movement are all explored. The narrator did a wonderful job voicing all these characters and I loved listening to this one too!

I really enjoyed this book. The writing is spectacular and the plot was interesting and engaging enough to keep me on my toes and interested the entire time throughout the read. I would highly recommend this one!