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!
