Friday 10 May 2013

Dance of Shadows


Dance of Shadows by Yelena Black

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Children's Books
Release Date: February 12th/2013
Pages: 469
Type: Hardcover
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What It's About!

Dancing with someone is an act of trust. Elegant and intimate; you're close enough to kiss, close enough to feel your partner's heartbeat. But for Vanessa, dance is deadly – and she must be very careful who she trusts . . .

Vanessa Adler attends an elite ballet school – the same one her older sister, Margaret, attended before she disappeared. Vanessa feels she can never live up to her sister's shining reputation. But Vanessa, with her glorious red hair and fair skin, has a kind of power when she dances – she loses herself in the music, breathes different air, and the world around her turns to flames . . .

Soon she attracts the attention of three men: gorgeous Zep, mysterious Justin, and the great, enigmatic choreographer Josef Zhalkovsky. When Josef asks Vanessa to dance the lead in the Firebird, she has little idea of the danger that lies ahead – and the burning forces about to be unleashed

Review

The book itself got 3.5 stars, but I gave it 5 because the cover is so gorgeous. Especially when you see it in person, some of the rose petals are shiny :)

The first quarter of the book started out really good and totally sucked me into the world of ballerinas and dance and the whole mystery of the missing sister that turned into being a whole bunch of missing girls. I really thought this book had amazing potential, but the author just didn't quite seem to reach the stars when it came to the actual story. The whole idea of the well-known dance academy having girls going missing was really good. Then slowly, the story just sort of petered out like a flame that starts out really big and bright and slowly goes out until there's almost nothing left.

In the last few chapters things picked up again, but didn't really seem to totally fit with the mystery the story had started out with. It did, but it didn't at the same time, but maybe my expectations were too high..

At first, I really liked the main character, Vanessa, though the deeper I got into the book, the more I disliked her. She was kind of flat and boring and didn't really use her brain much. There would be all these clues that practically painted a picture, and I thought I, as the reader, realized what was happening because she did, but then a few pages after she would finally put 2 and 2 together after asking a million stupid questions. It just really started irritating me by the time I was close to the end of the book. I think the only character I really liked was Justin. He felt the most realistic. Then there was Zep, the "bad guy", which was pretty much obvious right from the very beginning he would turn out to be a creep, but of course, Vanessa "had no idea" until the very end.

It's not a bad book, especially if you like ballet and not quite fully formed characters mixed with some mystery.


Rating 
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