In the world of Ballet, it's definitely a dog eat dog world as the only one can ever become the best, and in order to be the best, you have to strive for perfection and sacrifice everything around you from your weight , comforts of your life, free time and sometimes friendships can be broken and destroyed , all in the name of scoring that big part in the ballet shows. Best friends Marine and Kate have trained together since they were little at the Paris Opera Ballet School. For years, it has been the two of them against the world. However, they are starting to age out of the Ballet school and this year is the year of changes. The year that will make or break their career. During the year, the two girls will find themselves both in the line of the Demigod's eyes. He is the best male dancer at the academy and girls who dance with him, find themselves reaching high levels. Marine and Kate promised never to let anyone get between them, but the Demigod will as Kate first captures his interest. Of course, the Demigod has a rating system and takes thrills in breaking the hearts and souls of the dancers. Though Kate is a great dancer, her heart is weak, and we will read as she starts to isolate herself and create a bubble around herself and Demigod. Then he drops her and her ratings begin to decline, and life plummets. Then it's Marine's turn, she on the other hand as a firm determination as she joined ballet to honor her twin Oli's life. Bright Burning Stars was a tale of the inner world of Ballet stars and that to get to the top and be the best the sacrifices in life we have to take, and sometimes that means squashing the others around us. It also shows readers, that despite everything it is a true friendship that will always prevail.

As someone who loves stories about competitive boarding schools for the arts (like FAME, for example), I knew that BRIGHT BURNING STARS was going to be a fun and satisfying read for me if I took it for what it was. Told from the perspectives of best friends Marine and Kate, BRIGHT BURNING STARS is about the passion for dance, how friendships can change, and the damaging lengths some will go to to achieve supposed 'perfection'. Both Marine and Kate have their various kinds of baggage (Marine is still mourning the death of her twin brother Oli and has been fighting with body image; Kate is an American who has never gotten over her mother's abandonment), and they both felt realistic in their ups and downs and the choices they made. While I preferred the Marine perspective due to the fact I found myself relating to her more, Kate's chapters felt more complex and haunting. There weren't many surprises or twists in this book; it goes the way you predict it's going to go, and goes the way many of the stories like this do, but it was well done and I devoured it in one sitting.

If you like stories about elite schools and the students who attend them, BRIGHT BURNING STARS is a book to check out!

I read this book in two sittings! I was immediately pulled into the world of dance, and I was so intrigued by the characters.

Some reviewers are saying that this book is a bit dark and graphic, but what I think the author is trying to portray is how dark and graphic the world of dance and ballet can really be. There was teenage sex that resulted in unwanted teenage pregnancy, there was friendship and heartache, eating disorders, and other hard topics, but the author did an excellent jobs of showing the highs and lows that the dancers go through.

This book covered so many topics, and it was easy to get sucked into the world of ballet in France!

I hope you enjoyed reading about this new release!

For more reviews, check out my blog at www.sarahjuneblog.com!

Marine and Kate are best friends and each other's dance competition at their ballet school, Nanterre, in Paris, France. When they were younger they swore with their Moon Pact to either both win The Prize (a prestigious opportunity that picks only one female and one male dancer to join Paris' ballet corps) or both walk away. It isn't until they are in Division One that the reality of the matter is presented. Only one girl can win the competition; one will continue their dream while the other will pack their bags and never return.

Their once perfect bond of friendship begins to shatter as these truths come to light. They drift apart and battle separate demons that further divides their friendship into acquaintances and then rivals. Kate finds solace in cigarettes, drugs, and The Demigod, a fellow male dancer with striking looks and flawless ballet grace, while Marine focuses on improving her technique and dropping more weight from her rail-thin frame. After weeks of growing apart, Kate finds herself pregnant from a one-night stand with The Demigod who no longer wants anything to do with her, and Marine becomes paired with The Demigod (by their instructors) for the remainder of the year and starts her journey into anorexia and bulimia to transform her body into one that will rival Gia, the other female competition.

The story was enjoyable, although everything was predictable from the beginning. I knew what would result after reading the first chapter and getting introduced to Kate and Marine. When the ending arrived, I was proven right. I shared a connection with Marine since her struggle was so beautifully portrayed over the course of her year in Division One. You see her thoughts change with each chapter and how she spirals into her own worst enemy before finding her way out of the fog. She transforms into the skinniest girl in Division One and yet she still looks in the mirror and sees fat on her arms, hips, and thighs. I wish we could have seen more of her falling and rising, but since each chapter alternated between Kate and Marine we only get a glimpse into the damage she's inflicting on her body.

Kate, on the other hand, I did not like because of her personality. She claims she and Marine are best friends, but Marine is the only loyal and caring person in this friendship. Kate secretly is jealous of Marine and spites her over petty things. She is rude and manipulative to her (back at the beginning when they are still best friends) and Marine just shrugs it off. Thankfully it reaches the point where Marine realizes Kate is sabotaging their friendship by keeping things from her and purposely cutting her down (Kate is very hateful when she discovers Marine has been partnered with The Demigod) so she drifts off and finds solace in the one thing she can control: her weight.

While Marine grew into a stronger character at the end (literally; she is very selfless), Kate was still the same: vindictive, self-absorbed, selfish, arrogant, and making the same mistakes she did at the beginning of the year. I know their falling out had to be included to cause friction between the characters, but I wish Kate had transformed into a likable individual.

Thank you NetGalley and Edelweiss for the ARC.

SURPRISINGLY DARK.

I went into this book blindly reading because the synopsis was intriguing and I haven’t read any dance books before. I was really happy with how much I enjoyed it! I devoured it in hours.

This is one of those very rare instances where insta-love works. Dear independent Kate, really struggled in the boy department. And I was so angry and upset at her and for her. Her mental health is so poor and turning to boys only made things worse and this broke my heart.

Marine is the softer of the two and is completely wrapped up in her own grief. I liked how she overcame her personal struggles and allowed love into her life. Luc was way too precious and I LOVE him. He was the real hero of this story if you ask me.

On the other hand I’m going to personally destroy the snake, Cyrille. While I think the nickname “The Demigod” is a bit lame it made sense from a teen perspective. He was seriously the worst though y’all. Don’t even get me started.

The real danger is when passions rule your life. This ballet school is a deadly mash-up that kept me on my toes. I legitimately was concerned that this book wouldn’t have a happy ending. I’m grateful that the story was wrapped up and everyone went the direction they needed to.

One of the few issues I had with it was the amount of unexplained dance phrases. Anyone without a full knowledge (like myself) would be a tad confused with the dance scenes. I gathered enough, but I did get confused on occasion. The transitions to flashbacks was also a touch perplexing. I often didn’t realize we had gone to the past when the book had already come back to the present.

Overall audience notes:

Second Note: The Trigger Warning section will contain mild spoilers. I generally try to keep it free of those, but I feel it’s important to know what you might stumble across because this book has some difficult themes that shocked me and I would want others to know before reading.

YA Contemporary: difficult themes, please see Trigger Warning section
Language: a little
Romance: lots of kisses/make-outs, a few very little detailed love scenes
Violence: personal (detailed in trigger section)
Trigger warnings: anorexia, general obsession with weight, smoking, drug-use, underage drinking, self-harm, abortion, sexual exploitation, and suicide

While this story covers a lot of the same ground as other novels about ballet schools and young dancers, I really enjoyed it. Marine and Kate, best friends and rivals for the top ranking at the Paris Opera Ballet School, are complex enough characters that I enjoyed spending time inside their heads. It's kind of a typical story about friends drifting apart and becoming consumed with their own problems and insecurities and secrets, all set in the emotionally heightened setting of a competition. You get all of it: drugs, boys, sex, disordered eating, mean girls, gossip, rivalry, other bad decisions, triumphs, and failures. Yes, it's melodramatic, but it's about teenagers at a residential school for prodigies, so OF COURSE it's melodramatic! I think anybody into ballet and/or who is a teenaged girl is probably the target demographic for this.

I've seen other reviewers complain about the "double French," but it made perfect sense to me and would also, I suspect, to anyone familiar with ballet. While the setting is Paris, the book is in English and the ballet terms that would be in French--whether you're dancing in the U.S. or China or Russia--are in French. Nobody is ever going to translate "coup de pied" into English. This is not weird and I wasn't expecting to see reviews point it out.

To start off, I found the cover of Bright Burning Stars to be absolutely stunning. Then, the synopsis had me hooked. However, the book did fall a little short for me. I am not sure if it is because I know next to nothing about ballet or if it was the story itself. I thought that the main characters were very well thought out, I just could not relate to them. Each time one of the girls would fall "madly in love" with a boy I would cringe.

There was definitely a lot of constant drama as well. From the competition and ratings to health issues and eating disorders to romance and backstabbing there was no shortage. The story line moved at a decently brisk pace to keep the reader from losing interested. Although, I did find myself a little confused with the linguistics of the book. From the "double" French to the ballet terms, I found myself having to look up a lot of things.

All in all, this was an entertaining read. I found the location and the school to be very interesting. I had no idea that there was so much competition and practice that went into ballet at that level.

This book gives a look into the underbelly of the beautiful spectacle of ballet. Its delicate and gorgeous to watch, and we see art like Degas' dancing girls and marvel at how good they are at so young an age - but what is really happening behind the scenes? Stark at times, like a flourescent bulb in a concrete basement, this book still manages to leave you with a sense of hope and joy in the art of ballet.

I am always a fan of ballet stories and they must be good to live up to my high expectations. This book kept me involved from the first page to the last... Even though the plot was flimsy... I feel like you really need to have a dancer's background to really understand a lot of the terminology of this book, but I'm sure someone who has never put on a pair of point shoes can understand just well.

What I loved about this book was the explanation of the dances and how deep it went into the dancer's world. Its something that I love and am deeply passionate about.

The bad stuff was the dark nature of the ballet company and how the whole plot revolved around how depressing the dancer's life is. There was sex that meant nothing, oops a pregnancy and drugs passed out as long as you twirled in your birthday suite.

Even with all the sad truths plastered on the page for all to see, I was still really interested in the story. I guess it's like a train wreck, horrific, but you can't stop looking.

This book was heart wrenching and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a good read. The characters and the story were compelling.

The things that drew me to Bright Burning Stars by A.K. Small were the beautiful cover art and the fact that it was about dance. I have a history in jazz dance, and felt like I would be able to relate to the characters. I never realised how tough the life at a high level ballet school could be, though. This is definitely not something I could ever do. However, after I got over the initial shock of the way of life at Nanterre, the story felt longwinded. There was a lot of the same and the things that did happen were quite predictable (accidental pregnancy, anorexia, an honourable ending where the main characters rekindle their friendships again, I saw it all coming from the beginning).

The characters in the book evolved a little throughout the story, but not as much as I would have liked. I wished that more would have been done with Cyrille’s character too. He intrigued me from the beginning. Is he a serial killer? Possibly a rapist? But he turned out to be no more than an asshole. Missed opportunity if you ask me.

For people who love dance, and are familiar with the complicated French names of steps, this could be a good book. I personally had trouble forming an image of the story in my mind, especially the parts where intricate ballet dance pieces are described. I tried to make it easier for myself by reading the main characters’ chapters , which are written alternatingly from both points of view, in different accents. Marine’s I read with a British accent and Kate’s with an American one. Especially in the beginning this was helpful, since the stories ran very parallel to each other. Additionally I looked up some of the variations on YouTube, but I didn’t benefit from it as much as I would have liked.

In conclusion, I would say that the right audience would enjoy Bright Burning Stars, but most people will probably not appreciate it as much. It is a typical high school story with an intricate layer of ballet added on top.

There were moments where I thought the scenarios a bit outlandish but overall I think the majority of readers will enjoy this. It was ambitious, strong characters and a picturesque setting.

ok. ok. I love a dance movie/book, so when I skimmed the description on NetGalley, my brain understood "French ballet boarding school" and downloaded it immediately.

This was...fine. I liked the ballet stuff, though there's not much here that's groundbreaking if you've ever seen/read any other dance movie/book. Eating disorders? Sexually charged dance partners? Gross ouchy feet? You don't say. But that stuff is all done well, if you're into that kind of thing, which I am.

A linguistic pet peeve: this is set in France, the characters (except one) are French, they're presumably speaking French all the time but we're reading the dialogue translated because, you know, that's how books work. Except sometimes a random French word is thrown in the dialogue. So what's that, like, double-French?? (SOMETIMES this is for a specific phrase with the purpose of translating the difference between that and a similar English idiom, which makes sense for the American character, but sometimes it's just like bonjour or whatever, and like, why.)

Overall: a good read for fans of dance stuff, but not outstanding.

I enjoyed Bunheads and Black Swan, so this book grabbed my attention from the blurb. The story is told in two POVs from dancers in an elite ballet program. Sure, there are some clichés, but there are some difficult topics addressed, nonetheless, such as eating disorders, teen pregnancy, suicide, depression, and emotional abuse. I found it to be an engaging coming-of-age story, and the scenes unfolded in a way that could lead this to being made into a movie. The cover is a great fit for the story, as well.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy from NetGalley, but I wasn’t required to leave a positive review.

Intriguing story, enriched by location in France, dragged down by the over romanticizing of 'ballet' sex.

I love books about ballet and find that whole worth rather fascinating, so I was really excited to pick this one up. But I was left just a bit underwhelmed. While I do love books about ballet, I have yet to find one that explores the subject, the world, the dancers in any unique or new way: here was have the same tropes we see in every ballet book, from deadly competition to stuggles with eating disorders, unhealthy levels of commitment to the craft, and always, one super-hot lead male dancer that all the girls want to be with. While there's nothing necessarily wrong with this (and it all seems rather believable considering that it is, again, in every ballet book ever written) I was longing for something more here that I just didn't get. If you've never read a ballet book before, but you are interested in the subject, I think this is as good a place to start as any. But if you're read through a few and are hoping for something more, you might not find it here.

Marine and Kate have been best friends forever but only one can win The Prize. What will each girl be willing to do to win? Can their friendship survive to the end? As the Demigod starts to fall for Marine, Kate tries to use him to climb the scoreboard and get one step closer to "The Prize". Both girls are haunted by losses in their families and each has to find a way to cope with the loss in their own ways. They both have to answer the question, "What are you willing to do to win". This book was excellent. It was well written and kept me enthralled to the end. I would definitely suggest this book to my students.

*Thank you to NetGalley for the eARC of this title!*

Marine and Kate have been best friends since they began at the Paris Opera Ballet School years ago. Now at the top form, they are competing for The Prize - a career dancing with the Opera's prestigious corps de ballet, which is only given to one boy and one girl each year. When the body of a student is found in the dorms, the friends start to seriously question their commitment. Would they cheat to get the prize? Would they die for it? Would they seduce the #1 male dancer in hopes to partner with him?

As the competition gets fiercer, the emotions run high, and the small fissure between the best friends widens into a gap. Can their friendship survive the strain of their final year, the pressure, the boys?

*My Notes* I am not an athlete, but I love to read books about people who are, and these ballet dancers are absolutely athletes, with the competitive drive and the drama that comes with absolute ambition. This story absolutely sucked me in, and I couldn't wait to find out what happened. I look forward to seeing more from this author!

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC.

This book focuses on the darkness associated with ballerinas and the ballet life as well as the decline of a female friendship. Marin and Kate are in the same ballet group at their prestigious ballet academy, both striving to be the best and Win "The Prize."

But it all comes with a price: unwanted pregnancy, anoerexia, depression, emotional abuse, to just name a few.

I took off a star because Kate drove me crazy. She made all the wrong choices at all the right times and it was frustrating to me!

A gutsy, grueling look into the world of competitive ballet. It’s like Tiny Pretty Things was mashed up with Daughter of Smoke and Bone, with a dash of Black Swan thrown in for good measure. This one will appeal to readers of all genres.