Ballerinas are delicate and beautiful dancers who move with precision and effortlessness. But unbeknownst to their audience, what is going on inside their minds can be quite shocking.
Delphine, Lindsay and Margaux met at ballet school as teens. Since then they have been best friends as well as competitive dancers while continuing to be each other’s cheerleaders. All that was changed when an incident occurred which altered their friendships as well as their individual lives.
Delphine, now in her mid-thirties, who basically ran away from her friends after the incident fled to St. Petersburg, and now has come back to France as a choreographer preparing a new ballet. She is a rising star, she has been told. Hoping to rekindle the friendships, she casts both friends in the ballet, along with a male dancer whom Delphine has never been able to get out of her mind. But she immediately realizes this was perhaps a mistake. You cannot really go back to relationships which had been fractured and never been put back together.
As the tension mounts with the friends, Delphine finds out the woman who basically raised her is having medical problems. Delphine’s mother was a prima ballerina in her day, known all over the world. The most shocking thing her mother ever did was actually have Delphine when she found out she was pregnant. Because as ballerina’s know, pregnancy changes the body and then there goes your career.
But their past secrets and resentments do come back to haunt the women. Who they loved, why they married, and who they left are were never answered questions among them. Delphine soon discovers that her friends whom she thought had it all clearly did not. They too had regrets, a fear of getting older. Even secrets which are hidden in plain sight which will haunt them for the rest of their lives.
The story moves back and forth from their current situations to when they first met and the escapades they all endured, some funny and some heartbreaking. But no matter who was angry at who their camaraderie could not be broken. Until it broke.
Sometimes friendships can become toxic and unhealthy, but true friends are able to move past those parts and regrow what was the base of the bond from all those years ago. Even when the love they have for each other takes a dramatic turn, one no one could have seen coming. But will they survive the new secrets which now must be hidden?
The Ballerinas is an interesting behind the scenes look at what it must be like to be a classical dancer, the pain they tolerate as they put their bodies through enormous stress, as well as the competition element which certainly makes it difficult to be friends, never mind stay friends, But the twist at the end is by far well worth watching the whole performance!
Thank you #NetGalley #St.Martin’sPress #TheBallerinas #RachelKapeke-Dale for the advanced copy. The book will be out December 7.
Lisa's Cubby 