Actual rating: 3.5 stars

This book was published back in 2014, so I didn't have high hopes. Honestly, I was pleasantly surprised. There was like no slut shaming like there typically is in books published around there. There was a decent amount of fairly healthy friendships (and a few not-so healthy). This book focuses on family quite a bit as the story takes place after Natalya and her father were in a car accident that was fatal for her father and severely injured her, which in turn was the reason she could not attend an arts academy to study ballet. She has to go to public school. Natalya's relationship with her mother is damaged by the loss of her father. There is a good amount that touches on grief and addiction in this story. I think the writing was very easy to digest and it was easy to connect with the characters. I honestly would have been happy without the love interest relationship altogether and just had the focus be on Natalya, her mom, and how they are both coping and coming to terms with such a difficult loss.

Ballet is a narrative I always love reading about and the same went for this story. The characters were interesting and the plot had me glued to the pages until I finished.

Just last year, Natalya Pushkaya was living her dream. Attending the School of Performing Arts in New York, and determined to become a prima ballerina. Then she lost it all. Her father, her dreams of dancing on stage and she blames herself for it all. She is back home in her home town of New Jersy to recuperate, scared, badly injured with only a slim chance of recovering her dream, but endless determination. But life gets in her way. Her mother, once a prima ballerina, is now an alcoholic, and Natalya spends her time caring for her. But her mother has a terrible secret she has been keeping from her, that drives her even further to drink.

In the meantime Natalya is rebuilding friendships that she let slide when she had no time for anything but dance, and learning to let people in. Then along comes Antonio, charming, sexy, but with problems of his own. His problems come to light just when Natalya’s mothers devastating secret comes out, driving Natalya to drink herself. Can she learn to trust and let people help her before she destroys her life?

This book is not one I tend to gravitate towards. But I found that once I started reading it, I was drawn in. The characters were so real, hurt by life, with everything seeming to break, yet they fought to regain control. When they fell down they picked one another up, the strength of bonds forming forged even stronger by their life situations. Natalya’s struggle to try and keep plates spinning, keep her mother in her job, keep herself in school, cope with the loss of her father and keep on trying to get back to dancing is a heartbreaking one, and seeing her try to do it along even more so. I found myself almost cheering when she started reaching out to people, and when her love interest blossomed cheered even more. She needed love, stability and hope. Ballet previously gave her all of that, and watching her have to find it in other ways was poignant, but beautiful at the same time. A beautiful and moving read.

This was a wonderful story about a girl coming back from a tragic accident. I found it to be inspiring and gut-wrenching all at the same time. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a great Young Adult story.