A. K. Small

Thank you NetGalley and Algonquin Young Readersfor the chance to read and review If I Promise you Wings by A. K. Small.

A. K. Small is French American and we defiantly get that in this book with loads of French words thrown in! I was made fun of by my 12 year old cousin who can speak French fluently (product of French school). Apparently I can’t do the Rs right!

If I Promise You Wings is 336 pages long and, like Bright Burning Stars is published by Algonquin Young Readers which is a Hachette imprint!

I do really appreciate that A. K. Small set this in the world of feather artistry which was completely new to me! It felt like being in a fantasy! Like feather artistry does feel completely unreal even now! The inclusion of Emily Dickinson’s poem was also a lovely touch!

The book is sweet. There is no other way to put it. It’s great to see Alix grow and deal with her grief and meet new people and branch out, but aside from that a lot of the stuff with her father was really anti-climatic (even though I understand that life can be that way) and even stuff at Mille etc Une Plume was very everyone wins and is happy at the end of it all.

But again, I am 28, I am absolutely not the target audience for this book, which may love it a lot more than I do! I suspect that a younger audience may appreciate the book a lot more and relate to Alix, as well as appreciate how she ended things with Raven when she knew it wasn't for her.… (mehr)

Spoilers. Originally, I wrote a long, detailed review of why I hated this book so much. Then, I complained for fifteen minutes to someone else and realized I didn't feel like typing it out on here. This has to be one of the most boring ballet fiction books I've read, and I am usually so excited to read a new one. This was advertised as "Black Swan but in a YA view" and I was excited. The cover alone indicates the summary. I checked out the DVD on the same day I checked out the book, and placed them right next to each other coincidentally. When I saw that, I laughed. Then, I looked closer and smiled. So, I picked up the book and started to read. On page ten, the two protagonists announced the book would be super boring and I should prepare to skim.

TW: Pedophilic overtones in this book
This book needs a pedophilic overtones warning. The author doesn't know how to write teenagers, so we wind up with a five-year-old in a sixteen-year-old's body who's very excited to lose her virginity to a fellow teenager. Tell me handing someone a red paper heart isn't something solidly associated with children. Her friend has at most the emotional state of a thirteen-year-old, but the author insists she, too, is sixteen. My skin crawled so much I'm surprised it didn't burst open. Will someone please tell me how sleeping with another student is supposed to make you a better dancer? There's also a pregnancy leading to abortion subplot in this book. There's definitely books to address that, but 'teens in ballet school' books aren't that place unless there's a -lot- of groundwork laid to pull that off. That is not what happened here, and the writing was super clumsy.

The book jacket points out that drugs will be mentioned, and they barely are. The book jacket also indicates eating disorders and suicide. The eating disorder happens for all of twenty pages. This is about teens in ballet! Eating disorders are a perfect topic to examine at length and in detail. For two teens who are so good at ballet that they travel abroad to Paris, there is no sense of skill or adoration of ballet because the writing is so bland. There is no sense of competition between the two, only cheap insults about other girls. I can't imagine how these protagonists got here. Why would such a prestigious school let in a five-year-old and a thirteen-year-old? They are emotionally unable to handle the challenges that come with this. And yet, the book keeps making them top-of-the-list dancers. They never stop whining. Scare me, damn it. This was supposed to be a horror-inspired novel!

The suicide attempt happens in the last eight pages of the novel because the pacing in this book is awful. The suicide attempt is resolved in three pages. There is no depression, no buildup, nothing besides "I didn't make it! Let me be melodramatic!" I wanted to feel emotion and worry about suicidal teenagers, not listen to crying toddlers or be inside the minds of tweens drooling at the thought of overly-romantic sex.

This book was disgusting. Don't waste your time--just watch the Natalie Portman movie instead.… (mehr)

On one hand, this was a good, well-written book about two teenagers studying ballet. On the other hand, maybe I'm more of a well-adjusted adult than I realized, because an environment in which girls starve themselves into eating disorders, drug themselves to perform better, and relationships are determined by who dances bests strikes me as unhealthy and toxic. I realize this is also a book about mental illness and that the two narrators are likely not perceiving everything quite right, but I kept wondering why the adults were encouraging these actions and not stepping in to put a stop to some of these behaviors. To be fair, there also wouldn't be much of a plot if that happened. Overall, a good read, just know what you're getting into.… (mehr)

I fell in love with this cover and was eager to read this book. I love books with dance in them and thought this would offer a good glimpse into the competitiveness of ballet. However, I have never been a fan of toxic female relationships; there are few books I've read where I thought that was done successfully. Unfortunately, there was a lot of problematic issues that stemmed from Marine and Kate's friendship and not all were handled well.

Bright Burning Stars touches on ballet culture, eating disorders, abortion, and toxic relationships (both friendship and romantic). It was a lot of serious topics, probably too many to tackle in one book, and I wasn't a fan of how many were handled. I wish they would have been explored in more detail and fleshed out better.

I received an advanced copy from Algonquin Young Readers in return for an honest review.… (mehr)