I really liked the idea of this book. Unfortunately it felt very over descriptive and yet somehow many of the characters felt flat. Some things felt like the beginning of a solid idea but then they weren't totally finished off, I really did enjoy the wintery vibes and the idea of ballet telling a story similar to that of Death & the Maiden but unfortunately this book just did not hit how l had hoped.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

I found Wees’ debut novel Nocturne to be enchanting, original, and hypnotizing. The romance elements of the story didn’t hit quite so hard for me as the folklore/mythology elements did; with that said anything it may have been slightly lacking in, this book made up for it in vibes and atmosphere alone.
I think this is one I’ll be thinking about for a while. Thank you, NetGalley, Random House and Alyssa Wees for this ARC!

This book was definitely not what I thought it was going to be. The prose may work for some but it wasn't for me. The characters and plot ended up being blah and I spent many pages skimming and trying to get to the end as fast as I could. There was so much potential given the book's description but everything fell flat.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Del Rey for the opportunity to read an advance reading copy.

This was a good story, don’t get me wrong. But I’m not sure whether I read the description wrong, or the description was misleading. I thought this was going to be a Beauty and the Beast/Phantom of the Opera/Hades and Persephone romantic retelling with fantasy elements.
This is not a romance. This is very dark story heavily influenced with death and dark imagery and depression. The tone is extremely bleak and almost morbid.
I as a mood reader, I should’ve noticed the tone and imagery and stopped immediately, but I pushed through because I thought the ending would ultimately be happy. And I suppose some could interpret it as happy, but I was expecting an HEA, which it definitely was not.
Also, I thought the writing was a bit much at times. The imagery was beautiful, but I think it could’ve been scaled back at least 50%.
Maybe if I had been in a different mood, or at a different point in my life, I would’ve enjoyed this more, but I was expecting something that I didn’t get and it was a disappointment.
I think if a reader goes into this aware of what they’re reading, they’ll enjoy it more than I did.
I would recommend this for fans of very dark fantasy, like the Night Circus, Coraline, or Pan’s Labyrinth

Title: Nocturne
Author: Alyssa Wees
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Format: eARC
Series: NA
Star Rating: 3 stars

tw: death, mob killing, humans being sold, gun violence, decay of bodies, assault, extreme grief

A special thank you goes to Netgalley and Del Ray books for giving me a copy of this book. Please know that this does not influence my rating or thoughts on the book itself.

So this book was interesting. It certainly was not what I thought it was going to be. I had thought that maybe it was a Hades/Persephone retelling but I don’t think it was. I think it’s more about the sandman or perhaps the grim reaper. Regardless of what it was, my feelings about it are mixed. I’m not sure if I truly liked it or not. I had the same feelings about The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh. I still think about that book to this day and I read it four years ago.

I’ll start with the writing. The writing was very beautiful and almost graphic at times. It did work for what the book was about. While I enjoyed the metaphors at first, after a while, it got to be too much. I often have this problem. I enjoy metaphoric writing at first but then it starts to annoy me. I understand that a metaphoric style of writing is a good writing tool, I just think it could be toned down a little bit.

Grace, who was the main character, was okay. Early in the book, she just seemed so weak and naive to me. I liked her more toward the end when she went into vengeance mode. I wish she had been that way the whole book. I think I would have rated this book higher. Before that, she felt weak as I mentioned above. I also loved the friendship between Emilia and Grace. That is what friendship and sisterhood should be.

Overall, the book was okay. It was really the ending that I had a problem with. It was an odd ending and to be honest, I think it could have been stronger. But maybe that was the ending we were supposed to get all along. I don’t think the book could have ended any other way but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Overall, it was a bad book, I just had different expectations for it. One thing is for sure, this book is going to haunt me for a long time.

3.5 stars. This book was a bit uneven for me. I liked the main characters, especially Grace, but she was also inconsistent and frustrating at times. The story is mostly through her and her thoughts which are all over the place and don't always make sense but she is pretty much consistently in a traumatic situation so that also does track but I had a hard time following what was happening at times. That said, I appreciated the level of description and detail in this book. You truly feel like you are with Grace in 1930s Chicago and her life is falling apart on the inside, even as things look up from the outside. I think her fellow dancers are used to great effect to show how the fantasy of Grace's life is well hidden from the rest of the world. The plot was a bit all over for me as well; It finally comes into its own about 60% of the way through but I almost gave up before I got there. It's a very bittersweet ending so not for you if you require a clear happy ending.

Nocturne is a very dreamy, wintery book with clear idea of how to convey fear. Unfortunately, however, it's plotline is very lacking. In fact, there are times when we have absolutely no idea what is going on. Personally, I didn't even understand what the whole point of the story was. Revenge?

Nocturne was Phantom of the Opera meets Beauty and the Beast where Death is the love interest.

WHAT MORE DO YOU NEED?

Alyssa Wees has an incredible way with words, the lyrical poetry of it perfectly matching the grand, theatrical aspect of the plot. It’s a slow burn story, and I saw some of the twists coming, but was having too much fun to care. And that ENDING. Beautiful and heartbreaking.

Highly recommend!

So grateful to Netgalley and the publisher for the arc!

-A

I really didn't think this was going to be Phantom of the Opera Fan Fiction, but even if that wasn't the intent, its what the final product turned into.

This week I opened up Nocturne by Alyssa Wees, a gift granted to me by the publishers Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine and Del Rey via NetGalley. I know absolutely nothing about ballerina-ing (that’s a word right?), but I loved the summary of this book so I decided to wish for it.

My wish was granted and I received a free copy of the book. The review below is reflective of my honest and voluntary opinions.

What I liked about the book:
1. That cover is gorgeous. Something about it is breathtakingly haunting and so avant-garde that I knew I was hooked after seeing it.

2. Overall, I liked the idea behind this story. I don’t want to spoil too much, but this definitely had a mythological feel to it, which I was absolutely crazy for! I love stories within stories and the worldbuilding that goes into fantasy-laden stories is usually so interesting to me. This was no exception.

3. Overall, I did enjoy the lyrical writing style the author employed. There were A LOT of descriptors used on the simplest of things. If done right, I absolutely love this approach. To me, it’s why I love Orwell and Bradbury: taking a simple thought or topic and strangling words out of it until you feel every word connecting you to the story; as though every word breathes fresh energy into you. However, if done wrong, it just feels exhausting.

I see a lot of reviews for this book with this as a critique. To me, I did not mind, and even enjoyed, the writing style. What I did not enjoy was waiting so long to understand where those beautiful words were taking me (see item 1 in the “What could have been better” section).

What could have been better:
1. What at times was reminiscent of Beauty and the Beast, The Phantom of the Opera, and Hades and Persephone, somehow managed to feel uneventful. I was waiting and waiting and waiting for something to happen, for some big reveal to come, for the other ballet slipper to drop, and it didn’t really do it for me when it did. Instead of being a large *BANG!* of excitement, the “reveal” was a slow *fizzzzzzzle*. It was pretty easy to figure out early on what it was going to be, but then it wasn’t really satisfactorily done in my opinion.

On top of this, I felt like the main story didn’t really take off until about 55-60% of the way through the book. I swore when we were this deep into the story and she had just started meeting the other MCs, that this was going to be a duology. So, of course, I stopped reading and scoured Goodreads and the author’s website to see when the next book was going to come out. End result: this isn’t a duology, it just wasn’t set up well. With all the fluff in the front of the book and the meat of the book not really happening until the last half, it was hard to become attached to any of the characters or the plot.

2. My biggest gripe was the character development. Bottom-line, there wasn’t any for 2 of the 3 main characters. For a book praised as a “dark romance” and a “lush gothic romance that will dance you dizzy”, I found exactly zero romance in this thing, which makes sense when you realize the author only expands on one character for the entire book.

Furthermore, I did not feel a connection to the main character, Grace. She wasn’t annoyingly perfect or relatedly flawed; she wasn’t over the top silly or fiery fierce. She just was, which I found a bit boring for a main character that acted as really the sole character for such a large amount of the book.

3. As much as I loved the mythological feel, I didn’t feel like we got enough backstory into it. I would much rather have focused on the deal between the brothers and who they were as characters, than read over and over again how this chick wanted to jump out of a window.

Final Rating: 2.5 stars

CONTENT WARNING: death of a sibling, death of a parent, grief, blood, murder, violence

As a lifelong fan of ballet, this story immediately caught my attention. Historical fantasy can be gorgeous when it’s done well, and this one had some incredible elements that set it up to be a fabulous story, however, the execution fell short for me for a variety of reasons.

The first thing that I noticed was the writing. I love lyrical, beautiful, and descriptive writing, so the description was initially a selling point. Once I started reading, I quickly became frustrated with the exceptionally flowery and overly purple writing. At every possible opportunity, the author used long and drawn out descriptions of everything from emotions to colors to surroundings to sounds, often incorporating strange similes and metaphors. There were so many paragraphs devoted to these descriptions when a simple sentence would have done, and it was frustrating to slog through all these descriptions of something so mundane.

I did like the historical descriptions of Depression-era Chicago, especially the differences between those who live in poverty and those who are wealthy. There are characters representative of both socioeconomic strata in society. And seeing how Grace came from the poor, immigrant area of Chicago, I was expecting to see more of her struggle in this story. As a young girl in a single parent home, her brother died as a result of his working with gangsters, her mother died from illness, and they often struggled with lack of heat and not enough food.

Instead of seeing her obstacles, as she’s forced to play violin on the street to earn money, she just kind of wanders into a ballet school and is immediately taken in and given not only a place at the school, but also room and board. It kind of felt like everything was handed to her, and we don’t see her struggle very much at all. Even once she’s at the school, despite the fact that she isn’t the best technical dancer or the most skilled, she’s rapidly promoted to not only prima ballerina, but is granted an elite title normally reserved for ballerinas who have demonstrated the most exceptional of skills in their generation of dancers.

Ultimately, these gifts come about as the result of her patron, Master La Rosa, and the relationship that develops between these two is incredibly imbalanced and unhealthy. For so much of Grace’s story, she doesn’t really make many of her own decisions, and just kind of lets life happen to her. She comes across as incredibly naïve and blind to what is going on right in front of her face, satisfied to live in her own fantasies, and hope for a better life without actually taking steps to make it happen. It isn’t until the end of the story that she starts showing some agency, and the character development was lacking for Grace, while the side characters were flat and underdeveloped.

This story brought to mind Belladonna by Adalyn Grace, with the relationship between the MC and Death, although I felt much more invested in that story than I did in this one. The plot in this book felt much more muddled, as if it was inspired by multiple stories but instead of simply drawing from them and turning it into something new, it attempted to mash them up and didn’t manage to do so successfully. There were elements of Beauty and the Beast, Phantom of the Opera, and Hades and Persephone, but ultimately not quite getting across a clear message of any of these or a unique one.

Thank you, Netgalley and Publisher, for this Arc!!

This is a gorgeous fairytale!! This stole me away from reality and gave me a dark, wandering and enchanting tale to rest in.

Grace has not had an easy life. She is living in Chicago around the 1930's.
Orphaned by age 13, she finds herself at a local ballet school. Now, at age 20, she is finally offered the position of prima ballerina. However, as is often warned in fairytales, all things come with a price.

Grace finds out she has a very rich and mysterious sponsor. So, naturally, she does everything in her power to find out who he is. When she finally does she is shocked at what she finds. No mere man, but death himself. And, Grace finds herself trapped between reality and illusion.

This was an entrancing read. I loved the dreamlike quality of the author's writing style. Especially because this only added to the natural surreal quality of the story.

Out February 21, 2023!

Decided I’m going to stop at chapter 3 before I throw myself into another reading slump. Another reviewer said this book is overly descriptive to the point it’s exhausting, and they’re exactly right. Y’all know I never skim over the fine details; however in this case I would make an exception if I ever felt the need to continue this book just to see how it ends.

What I can say about the book from where I left off is the characters are incredibly bland and I felt disconnected from the fmc Grace. A little less on the over-exaggerated prose and more focus on the feels and fleshing out the characters is a MUST for this story.

Okay folks, I don't write many 1-star reviews, but when I do, it;s because the book was terrible and I want to warn readers away from it. Really. This book is one of those.

On the outside, it is a beautful book and I was so excited to get the ARC. What's not to love about a story about an up-and-coming ballerina in 1930's Chicago? Well, apparently, there's not much to love about this story,

I couldn;t connect with the characters who were flat and just awkward. And there is basically no plot until the very end. Throughout the book it jumps in time from past to present and you're never quite sure what is going on. Nothing. That's what's going on. Remember the myth about CHarles Dickens being paid by the word? Okay, that's totally not true, but I would believe it with this book. There is a lot of flowery descriptions that don't lead anywhere.

"Sleep comes to mortals every night of their lives, while death only comes but once."

Orphan Grace Dragotta has always wanted to be a ballerina but, when she is given the role of prima, a mysterious benefactor changes everything. With Death and Sleep battling it out on stage for the soul of The Girl, Grace realizes there's a battle also taking place off stage.

As a former ballet dancer and lover of The Phantom of the Opera, the way Alyssa Wees brings together the hauntingly beautiful nature of both is extraordinary. I highly recommend this book to all ballet lovers and those who enjoy a good fantasy with a side of romance thrown in.

ARC provided by NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group in exchange for a fair review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Ballantine for providing me with an advanced copy. What follows is my honest review.

In 1930s Chicago, Grace rises to the position of prima ballerina at the behest of a mysterious patron, only to be whisked away into his kingdom.

I’m trying very hard not to DNF any more arcs, but the problem with this is that I end up resenting books more than I otherwise would—so this rating might go up to 2* at some point. But for now…. wow was that a painful experience.

I see a lot of reviews criticizing the purple prose, and they’re definitely right—if you don’t like purple prose, this book is not for you. Sometimes, though, I feel that the vibes of a story fit well with some purple prose, and at least at first this is the case for Nocturne. A lush mix of Nutcracker, Black Swan, Beauty and the Beast, and Phantom of the Opera vibes, I appreciated the otherworldly feeling that the prose provides. But there’s a fine line between lyrical and tedious when it comes to purple prose, and especially when combined with the other aspects of the story, Nocturne definitely crosses that line for me, to the point where reading it was nearly unbearable.

The plot is simple and, again, more vibes than actual complexity, but that being said it’s an interesting concept. Several plot points seem to be forgotten quickly, though, almost as if they’re thrown in for the purple prose and immediately forgotten for… more purple prose. It’s often hard to tell what’s actually going on and what’s just imagery. Given all this, the characters are shallow and inconsistent; I don’t have a strong grip on anyone’s personality or drive.

All in all, though, Nocturne was fine—until a plot twist in the middle brings it into Wattpad/One Direction Bought Me territory. Up until then, my problems were primarily with the overuse of purple prose, any issues with the plot pretty easy to overlook, but the setting was just so not fitting for the plot twist that it felt ridiculous. It really only got worse from there, too; it’s a somewhat original concept (lost girl falls in love with death, who’s actually NOT the bad guy! so maybe not that original), but it’s all so shallow that nothing felt developed.

Nocturne is a dark and lyrical fairytale of a ballet dancer in 1930s Chicago and her forced arrangement with a mysterious patron that appears to be more beast than man.

While I appreciate what Wees was doing with the writing in trying to create deep emotions that are visceral, I thought that it was almost confusing in its sentiments. I just felt like there’s no way a girl in 1930s Chicago talks the way she does, especially in her own mind. It is very descriptive writing, almost overwhelmingly so. I felt a bit suffocated within the pages while trying to decipher what was even going on or for what reason.

The characters are part of why I struggled with the book in general: I didn’t get a true sense of them. Oh sure, I know where their death lives and how Grace feels like stars are burning in her veins or whatever the hell is going on with her in the book, but I didn’t feel like I really got to know her or the other characters. The Master is literally without any sort of personality, and when the characters interacted, I just felt empty.

For a relatively short book, it took me too long to sift through. I thought that the book started fairly strong, and the last 15% of the book made me interested again because it took a fun turn finally, but unfortunately, it was not enough for me to truly enjoy the book. The writing made me struggle and it’s surprising because I actually do enjoy flowery writing in a lot of cases. I suppose it’s a combination of aspects that ultimately did not work for me, but if a book that is a darker fantasy that has a psychological spin sounds enticing to you, perhaps give Nocturne a try.

*thank you NetGalley and Del Rey books for providing me an eARC in exchange for my honest review*

Thanks to Netgalley for an eARC of Nocturne. Alyssa uses various figurative language and vivid imagery that lead to beautiful writing. I felt this had several fairy tale elements and maybe even some Greek and Roman mythology. Grace Dragotta has grown up during the 1930s. Her father disappeared, her mother, brother, and a special friend, Signor Picataggi, all passed away, and she was left an orphan. The one thing that she has always wanted to be was a prima ballerina. At 13, she goes to a local ballet studio, and the Mistress takes her in. Now several years later, she has been raised from the corps and has been named the newest prima as the previous one; her best friend, Emilia, has met a man and is going to retire and marry. Grace thinks that she had earned the position on her own merits but later finds out that a new patron Master La Rosa is the one that requested she become the prima ballerina. Not only that, but her Mistress agrees to his terms of living Grace with him and a unique new ballet being choreographed that Grace will star in. Grace, though, is unhappy about this, and she doesn't think that Master La Rosa and his assistant, Mr. Russo are who they claim to be. Master La Rosa is a king, but there is more to his kingdom than meets the eye. At first, Grace is scared that she must live with him and dance with him every Sunday night at midnight, but as time goes on, she is drawn more and more to his kingdom, yet she doesn't want to give up what she must in order to become his queen. Will she be able to have everything she wants? Or will she have to give something up in order to have what she most wants?

Alyssa Wees brings a written work of fantasy. I was thrilled when reading the description of the book, as 1930s Chicago as an upcoming ballerina sounded like such a great storyline. The descriptions in the book were detailed, and sounded lovely at times, although I wish that it was easier to follow along with what was happening as I had a bit of a hard time wrapping my head around the plot. I really wish I would have liked this one more, but I don’t think that it would be something I would recommend. I think that this story did have a lot more potential than how it turned out. Thank you so much for the opportunity to read this advanced copy. For those still interested follow Grace as she discovers that once long held dreams may turn into new ones.
2.75

This evocative tale is reminiscent of Oscar Wilde or perhaps Hans Christian Anderson in its dreamy, otherworldly quality. As a gifted, and beautiful ballerina, it comes as no surprise that orphaned Grace is being courted by a wealthy, ballet patron. But the mystical identity of this suitor is truly and astonishingly beyond belief.

Fans of romantic fantasy will love this book.