Friday, June 1, 2018

REVIEW The Midnight Dance by Nikki Katz

The Midnight Dance by Nikki Katz
Published by SwoonReads
Fiction / Young Adult / Thriller / Mystery



I'm a huge fan of SwoonReads and their publishing. I came across this book about a year or two ago in some BookTube videos as an ARC copy. I always thought it sounded interesting, and earlier this year I caved and bought it.

Firstly, the cover is beautiful and one of the main reasons I picked this up. Also, it's Swoonreads, and I am on a journey to read a lot of their books.

This is a mind-control thriller that takes place in 19th century Italy at a ballet school. All of the ballerinas are being controlled by the owner of the school, Master/Cirillo. I love the setting, I think it's intriguing, and I am one for thrillers and the like.

I liked the idea behind this book, I liked the characters for the most part and thought it was a really solid YA book. I thought the descriptions were lovely, and I didn't have a hard time following what was going, most of the time. There were one or two points where I got a little lost and confused.

There was a lot that could have been done with this book, and most of those options I wish had been done. I was hoping for a kind of Phantom of the Opera type book; the young, pretty ballet dancer who has the attention of a dark and mysterious Master. Even if she wasn't at all attracted to him, the creepy/enticing factor could have been played up more. All the other girls seemed to be very attracted to him, which leads for a sense of mystery, and an opportunity to mislead the girls and the main character. There was misleading in the book on the Master's side, but not as much as I was hoping for.

The book jumped into the action pretty quickly, which surprised me, and I was fine with it, but by the middle of the book I wished I had had some more time with the characters and their relationships to Master a little more. He's the central figure and I wish I could have read more of Penny's interactions with him.

Spoiler-ish section:
I just learned that this is a standalone book, and that heavily disappoints me. The motivations for several of the characters were completely lost on me and were never clearly resolved by the end of the book. To give it away, Master and Bianca. Some of the characters, I got their motivations quite clearly, but those two, not so much. And knowing that this is a standalone, I will never never know completely the mysteries behind those two. It ended with me asking infuriating questions.

What was the real reason Master opened a ballet school? Was it purely for experimentation? Was he lonely? Was he trying to manipulate himself the perfect girlfriend? He begged Penny for him to explain, and I really wished she had stayed to get that explanation. And Bianca? She knew what was going on. I wanted to know her relationship to Master and why she remained so devoted to him.

Those are such important questions to just leave the reader with, and it made me kind of mad that I won't find out.

In terms of Swoonworthy? It was meh. The romance and tension could have been played up more between Penny and Cricket, and between Penny and Master.

I give this book:

💛💛💛

I wanted this book to be better, and it was good in a lot of ways, but it left me frustrated at the end because of all of the missed opportunities. I would recommend it to a friend it it was the exact type of book that they were looking for.

Note: For all Swoonreads books I will be using hearts instead of stars!