2 out of 4 stars
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Beach Ballet Stories by Karen Mae Somerfield follows Lucy through her first semester at the Beach Ballet school. Nervous about starting classes after feeling like she was too excited during her audition, Lucy vows to get off on the right foot. She makes an effort to be immediate besties with her roomies and do well at all her dances. But to Lucy, it seems like everything she does and says just gets her into trouble or annoys someone. With the help of her friends, can she get herself on track and fit in at her new school?
I was really excited to read this book. I have a soft spot for the performing arts, and I love books about boarding schools and kids bonding. Beach Ballet Stories definitely has these elements, especially the bonding. Lucy and her friends are a great little group to watch.
On the other hand, though, the group felt a bit torn. It takes one of Lucy’s roommates, Thalia, a while to get in with the group due to some home issues. Aside from her, Lucy’s friends don’t always seem like, well, friends. They pick on her about her abrasive personality a lot, and they are constantly telling her not to do or say things. Sometimes, it’s warranted. Other times, I felt bad for Lucy because it seemed her friends were ganging up on her.
The dynamic between the girls is really a piece of a larger problem, which is that the characters didn’t feel very well fleshed out. This is mostly due to the length of the book. With so much going on and so many characters, there wasn’t time to focus on character growth. As a result, I had a tough time connecting to any of the girls, even Lucy. Some were more distinguishable than others, but overall, I wanted more.
Similarly, I wanted more about the dances. Rehearsals and performances feel glossed over in a “and then we were done” way. I wanted to feel the emotions while the girls were dancing. I even wanted to see the individual steps, hear the music, get the full effect of watching a performance on the page. There were a few places where bits of that poked through, but it wasn’t enough to immerse me in the world of dance.
I noticed many errors throughout, mostly a lack of punctuation. This, along with not being able to fully get into the story, leads me to rate Beach Ballet Stories 2 out of 4 stars. There is amazing potential here for a middle-grade book about dance and girls bonding—breaking rules, holding each other up, and generally being girls at boarding school. For the bones of that story, my rating is brought up from 1, but I can’t quite give this 3. I recommend this story to lovers of young adult fiction and dance. Girls in the nine to thirteen age range would enjoy this book, especially if they like dance. I didn’t see much here to hold the male audience’s attention, but with an edit and a fleshing out of the characters, this could snag anyone by the heart and not let go.
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Beach Ballet Stories
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