Thanks to NetGalley for the digital ARC ...I really wanted to love this story, Paris, St. Petersburg, ballet insider lives...but I had a difficult time with the dual, sometimes triple time lines. Seems to me it would have flowed better had more time been spent in each time frame instead of the choppy back and forth and forth. I DID enjoy the idea of female friendship and how it will evolve but true friendship never really dies. Another enlightening issue is the "cost" to women in pursuing a life dedicated to ballet, none of which applies to the men that have chosen this profession.

Loved The Ballerinas! The book was so beautifully written and I fell in love with the characters and loved seeing their story unfold. My first book by Rachel Kepelke-Dale, but will definitely not be my last!

Thank you to netgalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review!

Oh, my goodness! This is a terrible book. It has absolutely no redeeming qualities.

Where do I begin? First and foremost, the three ballerinas are dreadful characters. Delphine, who is the main protagonist is especially irritating. I do not think I have ever read about a more selfish and self-absorbed character. Honestly, no matter how she spins it, there is no justification for what she does to Lindsey's husband.

Although one of the major themes is feminism I just saw a lot of male bashing, especially on Delphine's part. I am glad that she is able to get justice for what was done to her. However, I feel that instead of turning her negative experiences with men into something positive, she becomes bitter like her mother.

I'm not sure why this is being compared to "The Black Swan". That is a masterpiece while this is pedestrian at best.

I was so excited to get approved for this book. I was not disappointed - I really liked this one. Learned alot about ballet - I've never been a dancer and did not realize how cutthroat professional dancing is! Great story about friendship and I was intrigued until the very end! I will definitely recommend this book!!

I thought this novel sound interesting but sadly, I was disappointed. The story is very slow building and there was nothing exciting to keep me wanting to read. The characters weren’t developed enough for me to care about them. I usually enjoy a book whose timeline goes from present to past but this book left me confused.

I thank NetGalley and St Martin’s Press for the opportunity to read this novel.

I loved this book, and when I was younger I would go to the Nutcracker ballet with my grandmas, mom and cousin. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the Nutcracker, but I loved it more and more each time.

This book is a little less glamorous than the Nutcracker, but it proves that the ballet is far from perfect. Ballet and dance has an age limit on it, and I liked that one of the characters wanted to push the boundaries of having an older woman as the lead. This book also had secrets and jealousy, and that's the type of book I enjoy the most.

I also loved the flashbacks between the past and present. It can be sometimes hard to follow, especially if there is a lot going on. I think the author did a good job, and I could follow everything very easily. I couldn't put this book down!

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publisher for letting me review this amazing book!

At a very young age Margeaux, Lindsay and Delphine start their training at the Paris Opera Ballet where they become fast friends and take the reader by the hand on their journey to the top. Something happens in their teen years that will have a big impact on their professional lives.

In the present Delphine has just moved back from Russia and tries to strengthen ties with her old friends in Paris after a 13 year absence. But life is not that simple. The girls have grown into women with a lot more life experience.
Going back and forth in time, the past catching up with the present, the mystery slowly unfolds. Complicated by modern day issues these ladies have a lot of mending to do.

Very cleverly woven together, this is a story of friendship, the pleasure and the pain.
The workings of the ballet are well choreographed, the writing is excellent and pleasantly paced, the characters are indepth and true to life. The Ballerinas is a heartwarming story that will leave a long lasting impression.

Thank you Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC.

The story of three friends that are there for each other to the very end. Ballet is super competitive. You are careful what you share with the other ballerinas. Anything you say will be used against you. You trust no one!
A brilliant story of courage, strength, loyalty and hate and fear.
Great read!

The Ballerinas is a gem of a book. Focusing on the friendship/competition between three young ballet students the story follows them as they mature...through triumphs, jealousy, injuries, disappointments and finally through truth. The book is so much more than a story about dancing. It is raw and emotional as the author reveals those things that drive her characters... eventually to the point of murder. I voluntarily reviewed an advance copy of this book from NetGalley. Most highly recommend.

It's hard to be a ballerina. The grueling work begins when one is barely out of diapers and continues and intensifies throughout the teenage years, culminating (if you are very, very lucky) into a career that usually ends by age thirty-five. And in the meantime, you have to starve yourself ,humble yourself before egotistical choreographers and the only friends you have are other ballerinas, all of whom you compete against on a constant basis. Fun, huh? Kapelke-Dale does a wonderful job of portraying this world for us in THE BALLERINAS. We watch Delphine, Margaux and Lindsay as they grow from teenagers to young adults in this world - their joys and heartbreaks and the secret that binds them to one another. THE BALLERINAS has really well-developed characters and an intriguing plot and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I'm sorry to have to say it, but this book isn't for me. The cover is lovely; it reminds me of an impressionist painting, and the premise sounded very interesting.

For the first 10-20 perfect, I was completely drawn into the story. The writing was crisp, pretty but not overdone, and I loved the characterization of ballet and ballerinas in Paris, though I'm not a dancer myself.

But then it just got, dare I say, tedious. The writing that I had enjoyed got a bit repetitious, and I found myself waiting for twists that never happened. The major characters, all who are supposed to be in their mid-thirties during the present narrative are all so incredibly immature; the book just ends up sounding like whiny YA. You can throw around as many f-words as you'd like, it doesn't make anyone sound more grown up. Unfortunately, with the repetitive "we'll never get over what we did to Lindsey," I started to skim to find out what it was they did, but after a certain point, I just didn't care. And the awkward preachy monologues were a bit much. I checked out at being told that "there's an inherent indignity being in a woman's body. It's an exercise in constant humiliation." Excuse me, but what? I've never felt undignified or humiliated for being my gender, but thanks for that offensive generalization, I suppose.

I also didn't feel like this was anything fully French. The author is an American living in Paris, and outside of very French names, everyone sounded like they were centered in New York.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for making this available for review.

While I would not classify this book as a “mystery/thriller,” I did enjoy reading about the relationships and complications of the three primary characters. I don’t know if the author studied ballet in Paris, but the details seem specific enough that the book feels as though it was written by someone with personal knowledge of that world. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Ballet is a mirage -- an optical illusion that hides dark, jagged edges. Spectators are drawn in by the delicate, graceful extension of an arabesque, the precision of a pirouette, or the dramatic conclusion of a pas de deux. We watch with rapt attention as bird-like bodies are stretched and extended to their outer limits. We hold our collective breaths when women take flight like tulle-wrapped tumbleweeds, and men manipulate and guide those women through the air like marionettes.

Behind the illusion are the countless injuries and broken bones, the bloodied, scabbed sores that never fully heal, the bodies that are honed like blades in sharp relief, and a competitive force so fierce that friendships and families are willingly sacrificed in search of the next goal. These are the jagged edges of ballet, and this is what Kapelke-Dale captures so well in The Ballerinas.

The parts of The Ballerinas that drew me in were the parts that also drew me to ballet all those years ago when I was a young girl. Ballet is, at its core, aspirational. The ballet audience aspires to achieve the type of beauty and movement the dancers can deliver, and the dancers themselves are always in search of a kind of unattainable -- or unmeasurable -- perfection. For some, perfection is just an arch of the foot or the alignment of the hips or the curve of an arm. For others, it is attainment of the title of principal dancer or etoile. And still for some others, perfection lies in the ability to express the emotions that we hold in our deepest parts. In The Ballerinas, Delphine and her friends struggle to find their perfection, as they also come to terms with the expectations placed on women by society and by their own families and relationships. What does it mean to be a daughter or a mother or a friend? What does it mean not to be a mother? What does it mean to not have any power? What does it mean to want something you will never have?

The Ballerinas journeys through dual timelines spanning over twenty years, at times trying too much and too hard. There’s a #MeToo thread, a reproductive rights thread, a thread about the autonomy of women’s bodies, a feminist manifesto as filtered through the ballet lens, and so much more. I wish the author had delved deeper into one of the main threads, exploring more carefully the nuances of that thread and developing the characters accordingly. Instead, it felt like the author was rushing towards the denouement of every thread just at the point where there seemed to be a need to slow down and pause. There were some flashes of incisive commentary that could have been explored more fully to achieve that missing depth, for the benefit of both the story and the characters. I didn’t have an issue with the dual timelines, but here were some technical POV mistakes that made the writing not as polished as I would have liked. However, there is no denying the level of detail that Kapelke-Dale creates in her ballet world.

(Review will be updated with the link when published. Thank you for providing early access to this book in return for an honest review.)

When I saw this ARC compared to "Luckiest Girl Alive," I HAD to request it & I'm so glad I was granted a copy! Definitely a dark tale, but one that was completely unexpected with lots of twists and turns. It seemed early on that a secret was present amongst the three main characters, but Kapelke-Dale did a wonderful job weaving in several other story lines that all came together in the final chapters. I was blown away by the direction she went with Lindsay's story line especially - not only did she lose her husband, but she lost her career as a ballerina all within the same moment. It was definitely a wild finish that had me turning the pages, eager to see what happened next. A must-read if you were a dancer! So many vivid descriptions and events that will bring back memories of time spent in the studio.

Great story about the true meaning of friendship and how friendship changes over the years. It speaks to different kinds of friends and relationships and the lengths we go to protect not only those relationships, but ourselves. Also a story about finding oneself and finding out it’s ok if life sends you in a different direction.

The Ballerinas exposes the dark underside of professional ballet companies that we all know exists behind the pirouettes and high leaps. Following three ballerinas from their early years at a fictional Paris ballet company and going back and forth in time, the story shows in sometimes gruesome and often graphic detail the almost fight to the death competition for the rare few top of the heap roles for female dancers. At the same time, it’s the story of a remarkable friendship among the three ballerina protagonists - a friendship literally fractured over and over but one that is sustained over decades.

I received this book as an ARC from the publisher and NetGalley.

An amazing book of the intricacies of being a ballerina, the complications of friendship and personal goals and the meaning of home. It’s a story of self-discovery and wanting to be really seen for the person we truly are. In the era of the Metoo movement this book also addresses the influence that men can have over our lives as they try to mood us and as we aim to please, losing ourselves in the process. There is so much to discuss in this book. And to add to that I loved the setting in Paris and the behind the scenes of the ballet. I thank Netgalley and Rachel Kapelke-Dale for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book. 🩰🩰🩰🩰🩰

This book was categorized as mystery/thriller but I don't know if that's where I would have landed it. It strikes me more as a slow birn book about an unravelling friendship. There were some intriguing moments and an exciting premise but I didn't like any of the characters except for Stella, the non-dancer. I liked the moments of critique, where Delphine would step back and examine what it means to perform, but even she herself admits that she's now forcing other dancers to break down their bodies to execute her vision. It’s not my favorite kind of book, but if you like character driven stories with complex relationships, this one is for you!

The Ballerinas follows Delpine, a former ballerina and current choreographer, as she returns to Paris after spending over a decade in Russia. Fresh off a breakup, Delphine returns to her old ballet company to put on her first full length show and reunite with her two best friends, Lindsay and Margaux.

I enjoyed how the novel bounced back and forth between Delphine’s time as a student and later you professional ballerina in Paris and the present. The author reveals Delphine’s complex history with her friends slowly and I enjoyed the intrigue this built. However, I did feel like I would have enjoyed spending a bit more continuous time in each period rather than jumping back and forth so often with very short alternating chapters.
I would like to thank NetGalley and St. Martin’s press for an advanced reader copy of this book.

While I enjoyed the premise and set up, I had trouble connecting or sympathizing with the main character or really most of the side characters. Delphine can be incredibly self absorbed and it is frustrating to watch her continue making similar mistakes. For a book that is ultimately more about friendship than ballet, no one is a very good friend.

The words in this book are beautifully written just as dancers perform seamlessly on stage with artistic perfection. It draws us in with our visual imagination.

There are rules for women in ballet. They must be thin, beautiful, strong and indistinguishable. "You're not in charge of anything...except your body." However, there's one unwritten rule of not getting pregnant. Yet, this is what happened to the ballet star, Isabelle, who instantly became a single parent with her daughter, Delphine in Paris. Her birth was an accident. She took a year off and retired four years later.

Delphine from birth stepped into the world of dance watching her mother's enormous success. She followed her career and became best friends dancing with Lindsay and Margaux at a young age. The book has two timelines alternating between 1996 and 2018 when their careers on stage peaked. They supported each other with fierce competition as they focused tirelessly on reaching their goals at the Paris Opera Ballet as a soloist.

This isn't just a book about dancers. It revolves around the complexities of friendship at its core. It's about work and love relationships. It's how women are used as sexual objects. It gives us a glimpse behind the scenes in the world of ballet in Paris, NY and Russia.

I hope others enjoy this books much as I did. My thanks to Rachel Kapelle-Dale, St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for allowing me to read this advanced copy to be released on December 7, 2021.