This was an absolutely luscious read. The way that Juhea wrote about every aspect of ballet swept me off my feet. I was so drawn into the story and this was a rare case where a story handled multiple timelines flawlessly. I never felt confused or jerked around when we jumped back and forth in time and each segment of the story captivated me. I was a little let down by the discussion of Crimea and Ukraine - basically “I’m a ballerina so I don’t think about politics and its annoying that it got in the way of my career.” Not a perfect book but I think Juhea Kim really found her footing as a writer because her prose was fabulous.

So well written - sharp dialogue, dimensional characters that all feel full of life and unique perspective. The attention to detail to the art form is commendable. It made learning about ballet enjoyable.

I still think about Kim’s novel Beasts of a Little Land even though I read it years ago, so I was surprised to see how different her newest work is from that one. While her prose was still gorgeous, I just didn’t feel as invested in this story or these characters. Perhaps because I’m not overly interested in ballet. I think this book will be a huge hit with readers who appreciate a behind the scenes look at the world of ballet. I loved the cover for Beasts of a Little Land and this cover is just as stunningly gorgeous!

Russian ballet is a favorite thing to read about, and those parts of this book were the most impressive for me. The second half got a little sacchrine and soapy for my taste, but I was flying through the pages! I recommend this for a fast read during the holiday season!

Thank you to NetGalley, author Juhea Kim, and Ecco for providing me with a free ARC in exchange for my honest opinion!

As someone who grew up dancing, I love any novel to do with dance, especially one spanning years of love and loss. City of Night Birds was a beautiful read about a beautiful art that was just as frustrating as the sport can be in parts. I really enjoyed reading about Russian ballet because I am not very familiar with the ins and outs. I know the broad aspects of the style, but I thought Kim did a fantastic job of really transporting readers to Russia and explaining their acclaimed style. I personally enjoy a novel spanning a large time frame, so I really loved getting to follow Natalia across the majority of her adolescence and young adult hood. It really helped me as a reader get to know her as a character and see how ballet drove her. My biggest complaint would be the structure of this book. It's told kind of in flashbacks between the present where she is returning from an injury and her past leading up to it, but there is not a consistent pattern of how the story is told. There are parts where she is also having hallucinatory dreams that left me confused whether Kim was writing things that were happening or explaining what her dreams were. I also kept thinking the events of this novel were happening much earlier than they did, as it reads very much as a history fiction rather than a contemporary novel. It was a bit long and dense at times, but I personally was invested in the story and characters to where this didn't bother me as much. I would say if you like ballet, complicated characters, and a historical fiction style of storytelling, City of Night Birds can be a beautiful if at times complicated read.

For the week I spent reading this, it felt like a gift to exist.

An exceptional book—one that I’m devastated I let myself finish. I truly could have read this, forever.

A revered ballerina returns to the country, and ballet academy, she started her career in, only to find that all of her ghosts have come along with her.

I found myself hooked from the first to the very last line. There is so much about love, art, and legacy within these pages. I especially appreciated how, because we spend many years with these characters, it feels like a life of my own has passed alongside of them. I knew them as well as myself, by the end.

Gorgeous, through and through.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ecco books for an advanced copy of City of Night Birds. Juhea Kin delivers a vivid description into the world of ballet and the trials and tribulations ballerinas sometimes face. A well written novel of Natalia Leonova, a once prima ballerina, her toxic relationships., and her dramatic return to the stage.

This is my first novel by Juhea Kim and look forward to future books.

I'm always on the lookout for a great ballet book. This one tells the story of Natalia Leonova, who we first meet when she returns to her native Saint Petersburg after an injury derailed her career as a ballerina in Europe. She's a mess, dependent on alcohol and painkillers to soothe both her body and her mind. Dmitri, the artistic director of the Mariinsky Ballet and someone she clearly has some sort of history with, offers her a chance to return to the stage as the lead in Giselle. As she weighs the prospect of a comeback, we follow her earlier life to see how she got where she is: the daughter of a single mother who worked as a seamstress for the Mariinsky, she was enchanted by her glimpses into that exclusive world and determined to do whatever it took to not just make it in but make it to the top. Along the way, she finds friends, enemies, lovers, and everything in between. Dance becomes her life...making it all too easy to understand why she's in the state she is at the beginning of the book, after it's been taken away from her. It's a slow starter, and I struggled to get hooked into it. In part, I think this was due to the marketing, which lead me to expect a much more straightforward "ballet book" sort of plot, full of backstage rivalries, love triangles, soaring highs and agonizing lows. And it's not that those elements aren't there, but the book isn't really about that. It's about a woman who is both sensitive and reserved becoming an artist, becoming a person, how she tries to balance the compromises made between one and the other, how the struggles change as she ages. Natalia is not always an especially likeable character, but her perspective is an interesting one and she feels fully realized, like an actual person instead of just an idea on the page. Once I started letting the book tell me the story it was trying to tell me instead of waiting for it to become the story I was expecting it to be, I appreciated it much more and read the entire back half in one go when I couldn't sleep in the middle of the night. It's a book that requires reflection to achieve its full effect. If you don't have some baseline familiarity with Russian culture, some things about it will be hard to understand (the way names change depending on levels of formality, for example), but nothing that would impede being able to follow the story. It made me want to pick up the book about the history of the Bolshoi that's been on my shelves for ages now, and make a point to go see a ballet performed in person sometime soon. I wound up very much enjoying this and would recommend it to readers who enjoy both ballet and character-centered stories!

Enchanting and absolutely mesmerizing.

Natalia Leonova - once the only child of a single mom barely making ends meet, now a world-famous prima ballerina - reluctantly returns to her native St. Petersburg in the overture of this stunning novel.

Covering Natalia‘s meteoric rise, potentially career-ending injury, and chance at redemption, „City of Night Birds“ delivers an all-encompassing and completely engrossing look at the career of a professional dancer. It is both a mesmerizing overview of one ballerina‘s life, an intimate portrayal of her private struggles, and a love letter to art itself.

Like any good piece of art, this book completely enveloped me. Due to the novel’s wide scope covering an entire life in ballet, and due to Natalia’s indisputable talent, we are not made privy to every detail concerning Natalia’s training, performances, or even career milestones; rather, we are treated to a bird’s eye view of an exceptionally talented artist’s life in ballet. At the same time, „City of Night Birds“ provides an up close and personal view into Natalia’s relationships and her inner life. Enchanting and mesmerizing!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Ecco for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

„City of Night Birds“ is slated to be released on November 26, 2024.

Note: I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion. Thank you, NetGalley and publishers.

City of Night Birds is about a woman born with a rare gift, who refines her art over the years, becoming a ballerina known and revered the world over. Yet her story is often an unhappy one, as she sacrifices nearly everything in pursuit of her art. At the end of her career she has a legacy, but at great personal cost. Still, she would change nothing, because it was all worth it.

Two years after a life changing accident, Natalie Leonova returns to the world of ballet in St. Petersburg. Using pills and alcohol to numb her memories of the past,
she now faces the individuals responsible

Anyone interested in the world of ballet and the cutthroat drama, would love this one. You learn lot about the environment and culture, which I found fascinating. While a slower paced read, there’s an underlying sense of doom that grows and grows. Dual time lines lended a hint of the past each time it went back, but at times I had a hard time remembering where in time I was.

“Indeed, art of any kind isn’t possible with out it’s creator believing that it’s truer than reality. That’s the difference between art and something merely beautiful.”

City of Night Birds comes out 11/26.

I do ballet recreationally and I’m always on the lookout for stellar ballet novels. In City of Night Birds, Juhea Kim shows what a talented writer and true balletomane she is. It’s clear that she’s a dancer with a deep knowledge of ballet history as well as a true love for this art. The novel follows a Russian ballerina, Natalia Leonova, from her youth as an unlikely student at the Vaganova Academy to one of the greatest prima ballerinas of her generation, dancing at the Bolshoi, the Mariinsky and finally as an Étoile at the Paris Opera Ballet. The settings in St. Petersburg and Paris are so lush and vivid, and Natalia’s complex relationships with her lovers, her family, her fellow dancers and most of all, herself, keep the novel moving forward. 4.5 out of 5 pointe shoes!

Thanks so much to Ecco and NetGalley for providing me with a review copy!

Release date: November 26, 2024 🗓️

More of my favorite ballet novels:
🩰Dances by Nicole Cuffy
🩰They’re Going to Love You by Meg Howrey
🩰The Crane’s Dance by Meg Howrey
🩰Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead
🩰The Ballerinas by Rachel Kapelke-Dale
🩰The Turnout by Megan Abbott
🩰The Still Point by Tammy Greenwood
🩰Maya & Natasha by Elyse Durham

I want to read more from Juhea Kim after this. I loved this book so much. The writing was so elegant and I loved her style. I found each character's creation and development was made with such care and I loved reading it.

Juhea Kim's sublime sophomore effort is pure artistry. The characters of Alexander and Dmitri pose an intriguing parallel to Nina and Lily from Darren Aronofsky's film "Black Swan" in terms of the ruthless ambition and friendships developed among dancers. This novel is a nearly perfect literary artifact: something to savor long after the final page has been turned.

This novel chronicles the rise and (literal) fall of a modern Russian prima ballerina, and her journey to firm footing. Moving back and forth in time and between reality and hallucinations/delusions, together with no transition between the author’s first person narrative and critics’ articles in newspapers, the overall effect can be surreal and disorienting. Yet the story is gripping, as Natasha Leonova recounts her poor, fatherless childhood, her introduction to ballet, her friends and teachers at prestigious ballet schools, her lovers and her soaring successes and mysterious injury.

There are many similes, and ominous symbols of black birds – crows – that seem to threaten Natasha. This adds to a sense of eeriness, and one can be confused by the many references to ballet greats who may not be known to the general audience, as well as characters introduced with detail who then play only a moment’s role in the narrative.

And yet there is something almost hypnotic about the story and what it has to say about love, friends, success, the acceptance of an imperfect world behind the beautiful ballet scenes and costumes, and the magical experience of dancing and being seen, and becoming a whole, grounded person behind the scenes.

Posted on Bookstagram (@_rachaelreads_):

You may know Juhea Kim from her sweeping debut novel, Beasts of a Little Land, written as an ode to her heritage. City of Night Birds is different in many ways, but it is born from an equally heartfelt place: her lifelong love of dance.

With themes of love, addiction, artistic passion, and inner-turmoil, loving this book was an inevitability. But what drives this novel to a top-tier, six-star read for me goes beyond plot and character development: Juhea Kim is a master of literary atmosphere. The imagery was so vivid that I could close my eyes and see the story unfold, in all of its tones and hues.

I’ll say it with my whole chest: I loved this book on a granular level.

As a former competitive dancer myself, this book reinvigorated my thirst for performance art. I found myself watching YouTube videos of the performances described in the book, and I’ve even purchased tickets for The Nutcracker in December! A writer’s ability to convey such passion is a gift, and this book is a masterpiece.

I highly recommend this book to all LitFic readers, and anyone looking for a moving book about art, ambition, and redemption.

City of Night Birds has officially made it into my top three books of 2024 (and I’ve read 97 so that’s really saying something!)

I loved her first book and was excited about this one. It did not disappoint. It's hard to make unlikeable characters charming but you close the book and feel like you understand them. I can officially say that I am a big fan of Juhea Kim. Can't wait for the next book!

City of. Night Birds is about the world of ballet from the highest levels, starting in Russia and moving on to Paris. The descriptions of ballet were interesting to me and I enjoyed the behind the curtain view of ballet. The relationships of our protagonist were one dimensional. I never believed the connections. From the historical fiction stand point, I would have liked more of the history of when there was free movement between Russia and Paris and when the Kremlin tightened its grip. There is some discussion of Nureyev and Baryshnikov but very little. I was disappointed not to learn more about the government’s involvement in holding onto the artists. I enjoyed the book overall. 3.5*

Many thanks to Harper Collins and NetGalley for the advanced readers copy.

4.5 Stars

At first, I was somewhat worried that I would enjoy this book because it was about a topic I have not read before. I was mostly interested in reading it because of Juhea Kim's excellent writing. I am glad I requested this title! I was immersed in the story, beginning to end. Natasha's journey was captivating, heartbreaking, and beautiful all at once.

I cannot wait to read more of this author's work!

I love ballet and St Petersburg and this lovely book brought them both together. There are not many books that enter the world of ballet and depict it so skillfully. Natalie was a prima ballerina when she suffered a terrible accident that ended her career. This brought her into a downward spiral of of drinking and depression.
In this emotional story a dark character, Dimitri, from her past, gives her the opportunity to make a comeback. Should she take a chance? A beautiful love story set in Russia. This is also a coming of age story, an example of strength.