If you're a long-time follower of my blog, you know how much I love ballet. But in case you need the reminder, please see my posts about how every year Alexa and I get tickets to see three shows during the American Ballet Theatre spring-summer season (the exception being this year and last, for obvious reasons). So it shouldn't be a surprise to hear that I love ballet books! That said, there aren't many that fit the bill of what I'm looking for. Thanks to the movie Black Swan, many of the recent ballet books I come across always have this dark, suspenseful element to it and that's not what I want. I want contemporary books where the heroines just love ballet and pursue that dream while juggling every day life (growing up, romance, etc).
Imagine my surprise when I read not one but two books this year that had exactly that! It seemed like a good time to share a list of recommendations and hopefully you all may have some for me too.
1. Bunheads by Sophie Flack | I read this in 2012 (I'm long overdue for a re-read) but when I think of YA contemporary ballet fiction, this is the first the comes to mind. The author was a ballerina at the New York City Ballet and that experience shows in her story.
2. Kisses and Croissants by Anne-Sophie Jouhanneau | I mean, a sixteen year-old aspiring ballerina goes to Paris for a summer elite ballet program and meets a really cute guy along the way? I was pretty much guaranteed to love this.
3. The Other Side of Perfect by Mariko Turk | I read this last month and it's one of my favorite books of 2021. It's a different kind of ballet book and tackles some really important topics but at its core, it's about one young woman's love of dance.
4. A Time for Dancing by Davida Wills Hurwin | I will forever have a soft spot for this book. I read it in middle school and it was the first book that ever made me cry. It's about ballet, friendship, and loss. I re-reread it back in 2014 and it still gave me all the feelings.
5. I Wanna Be Where You Are by Kristina Forest | This definitely ballet-lite but it's still a fun, cute book about a young girl who goes on a road trip to audition for a dance conservatory against her mother's wishes.
6. Pointe by Brandy Colbert | Another ballet-lite novel, but much heavier in other aspects. Theo is an aspiring ballerina but she's juggling a lot in her personal life which is far more central to the story.
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Have you read any of these and if so, which is your favorite?
And do you have any ballet fiction recs for me?
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