I don't give out five stars lightly, but this book has earned it. A wonderful read that is a mix of Beauty and the Beast and Black Swan.

I'm a retired ballerina, and I loved reading about Grace. She had the drive of a dancer, and the will to match. Alyssa Wees knows how to write a wonderful dance scene that I could invasion with ease. To say I was enthralled in the story, is an understatement.

There were so many twists and turns in this story with the introduction of Master La Rosa. His story is torturous, but filled with hope. I wanted the best for him, but with the amazing story telling, I wasn't sure who to trust until the end. La Rosa was a great character, portrayed in a mysterious light. Loved it.

If I could go back and read this book again and feel the same excitement as the first time, I would in a heartbeat. This was a great read and I can't wait to see what else Wees brings to the table.

**Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.**

Nocturne is a chilling, mysterious story of a beautiful ballerina who falls into a nightmarish fairy tale. With very Phantom of the Opera/Beauty and the Beast vibes, this story was always magnificent and magical. Grace is a beautifully complex character and Master La Rosa is a beautiful Phantom/Beast who admires her.

The book, shockingly being less than 300 pages truly felt like a 600 page book. In some descriptions, it did drag, but not to the point of being difficult to read or wanting to put it down. For that, I do knock a star off. I felt like I was reading the book forever (even though I was enjoying it).

I would recommend this book to anyone who is a Phantom of the Opera fan as Grace is much like our cherished Christine, however I do sense a greater independence in Grace.

4/5 stars for a beautiful, magical setting as well as chilling and mysterious characters.

thank you to netgalley for providing me an ARC

DNF 28%

i really couldn’t get through with this.

i cannot go through pages if so much unnecessary detail that are clearly just there for a try-hard flowery prose. like no i don't need that much eccentric detail about "lushous blue the sky was". i understand doing so for the sake of creating an imaginative world, but it became too frustrating to follow.

i could not connect for the main character. she was so flat. literally all i could tell you about her is that she’s a ballerina and she had a tragic backstory.


also if i’m gonna read a historical fiction, i expect imagery and setting description. instead we got too much repetition and irrelevant info dumps.

this made a really good premise, but once again it falls into the “great concept, bad execution” kind of book ://

This is a great concept, a dark fairy tale, filled with ballet and some haunting mystery. I felt the writing was good, but I wanted the story to pop out at me more, not just be described to me. This one will be liked by some of my teens, but I do feel it might need a bit of tweaking before it goes out into the world.

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me a digital copy of "Nocturne" by Alyssa Wees to review.

Grace Dragotta has been running from death her whole life. It nearly took her as a child, and eventually came to claim her mother and older brother. She finds a safe haven in the corps of the Near North Ballet company, working her way up to become promoted to the newest prima ballerina. Although her new position comes with strings: a new patron has set his sights upon Grace, and for providing a way to keep the ballet company afloat, he requests that Grace be the lead in the next ballet. This new patron is unknown, haunting Grace's waking and sleeping dreams. But soon she finds herself reacquainted with death and falling deeper into an unknown world in pursuit of this mysterious new benefactor.

First and foremost, this is undoubtedly a book from the heart, imbued with a profuse knowledge and deep passion for the art of ballet, for music, for love of every kind, and for art itself. Wees' prose was truly lush, with some lines and descriptions sinking their teeth into my heart, embedding into the marrow of my bones. Her sentences and descriptions were as fantastical as the story itself.

However, sometimes this lofty prose was a detriment to my reading and to the overall pacing of the story. Wees continuously tries to amplify her writing with the overuse of literary devices. Hollow metaphors, long-winded similes and extended descriptions of emotion, action, and setting filled the book rather than an actual plot, and while at times such turns of phrase and comparisons were beautiful to read and certified her lushness of prose, most of the time these proved to be highly superfluous and merely decorative. Some healthy editing of these devices--or really any kind of editing--would have helped provide more meat to the story rather than these airy descriptions that dominated the book

I would have loved more of an emphasis on furthering the plot and really giving the reader a sense of a bubbling conflict. But it simply felt like the conflict only came in the last 25 or so pages and really only appeared to check off a box rather than feeling necessary to the story.

The premise of this book sounded highly promising--very reminiscent of "Phantom of the Opera" or Beauty and the Beast--but I found myself wanting more plot and less descriptive language, The beginning of the book where it focused on Grace's background and centered on the ballet was the strongest part of the novel. I only wish the rest of the book had held up.

This book is simply not for me, and I can't say I would recommend it to others.

Thank you Net Galley for an ARC of Nocturne by debut author Alyssa Wees. I thought this was a good concept, just not well executed. Also, I thought it was over written. It dragged. I did not like the ending also.

This is a beautiful and haunting story which loosely follows the Beauty and Beast fairytale but really it is it's own wonderful dark fairytale. It has ballet and music all in the setting of dark and gritty Chicago in the 1930s. The cold winter backdrop is the perfect setting for this story of death and love. I love the the fantasy world of death and dark. The words are slow and lyrical and I found myself re read large sections out loud to enjoy the verse. It reminds me a lot of Erin Morgentern's The Starless Sea with the prose being extensive and very descriptive but completely enjoyable.

The story was well done and thought out. I enjoyed the main character of Grace a lot. I found her a strong female character that was put in a bad situation over and over and came out on top. I loved the characters of Death and Sleep but the character I was most invested in was the Mistress of the studio. What a truly tragic and complex character. I didn't see the twist at the end coming. So good.

Highly recommend to anyone that likes dark fantasy with light romance and beautifully, descriptive writing. .

I was so excited to read this book after I read the blurb, but the execution was poor and hard to get through. 90% of the book was description, which got old very fast.

I did not enjoy this book as much as I hoped to. It was very slow and forgettable. While not badly written, I just didn't find it to be original.

The blurb really sold this for me and I was super excited to read it but the execution just wasn’t great.

This book was beautiful! It was very poetic and I felt left room for so many underlining interpretations. It was dark and twisty. The end ties it together perfectly. I was pretty obsessed and couldn't stop reading it one I got about 30% in.

Sooooo, hard to write a review on this one. I dislike giving low ratings on books but this one was tough. It had SO much potential. But ultimately it was incredibly disjointed and confusing. And very over-written. Now don't get me wrong, I can handle flowery descriptions and The Night Circus is one of my favorite books. But this was done in a way that doesn't even make sense. I had to reread passages to try to get what she was describing but came up empty. If you want a thorough review that I agreed with, check out Marquise in the review section.

This was an ARC I read through Netgalley.

Nocturne was a magical dreamland full of difficult choices for a girl with a kind heart. I enjoyed the vivid setting descriptions of the boarding house, Master’s house, and the city and temple.

I also loved how the story revolves around a ballerina who gets her chance to be prima but at a ghastly cost.

This story was beautiful and held my attention. I thought the language was perfect for the time period. I do wish the author had given more of a backstory for Mamma and Lorenzo.

The cover and the description of this book really sold me-- a dark re-telling of Beauty and the Beast that is also historical fiction and has elements of ballet?! It checked all the boxed of things I typically enjoy reading. The execution of these elements fell a little flat for me. The pacing of the plot was a little rushed for me, I wanted more world building and details of every element of the story because the premise is interesting! Overall, this book was not for me, but I may check out future titles from this author.

Nocturne by Alyssa Wees is a dark fantasy phantom of the opera meets Beauty an the beast with intense Night Circus vibes.

What worked for me
-Lovely lyrical prose
-Dark academia elements
-Mysterious benefactor
-a type of ending I don't often see

What Didn't work for me
-Our main character felt far too easily led by the words of others and was inconsistent in how she responded to basically every character.
-Our main character being as young as she is makes the behavior of much older beings feel incredibly off.

Who I would recommend this book for

Nocturne is a Great read for fans of Dark fantasy looking for a ballerina story written in a lyrical style similar to the Starless Sea or Strange the Dreamer.

3.5/5 rounded down

Nocturne is a beautifully written dark fantasy for fans of Belladonna and The Night Circus. In this story, we follow Grace on her journey from becoming an orphan as a child to becoming the new prima ballerina for her company. When a mysterious man starts supporting her performances, Grace is desperate to figure out his identity. However, once she meets him, she is filled with confusion and anger...and starts to regret ever being the prima ballerina.

I did feel the story dragged a bit at some points and I never felt as connected to the characters and their relationships as I wanted to. However, I would still recommend if you're in the mood for a fantasy book with artsy, dark academia vibes and a bittersweet ending.

Nocturne had a lot of potential, although there was an undercurrent to the story. It could have been a psychological thriller more easily than escapist fantasy. Grace feels and reads quite young. The story is mainly stream of consciousness with beautiful passages of lyrical descriptions, but the plot is stunted through most of the story. There is a cringe element with the idea of these immortal and timeless entities being obsessed with a teenage girl. Grace has experienced several hardships in her life which would generally lend a maturity to her character, but the story is mostly told through her mental ramblings. She is very easily persuaded to follow someone else's bidding and the ending still felt like she was reacting to those around her as opposed to owning her emotions and taking charge of her life.

Wow, this was a wholly unique read. I'll start by saying that I am a devoted fan of lush prose, so I have a very tolerance for lyrical metaphors and writing that's more rhythmic than efficient. YMMV, of course, but I think it's safe to say that if you do not enjoy writing that's crafted for beauty's sake, or have an aversion to an abundance of metaphors, this one's probably not for you. For me, though, the style of writing worked for most of the book and I was often in awe of the way the author put words together. The prose is lush and lyrical and dreamy, and overall, that contributed to the feeling that I was floating through this book along with Grace, one foot in the dreary reality of 1930s Chicago and the other in the realm of dreams. The writing and atmosphere of this book take center stage, which shifts plot to the backseat somewhat, but again, this was a choice I understand and accepted because it meant I got to feast on the beauty of the prose for 300+ pages. That said, I still think that, plot-wise, this book has one of the strongest openings I've read in ages. Grace, an aspiring ballerina of a ballet company in Depression-era Chicago, is chosen by a mysterious benefactor to be elevated to prima. Essentially, all her dreams come true, yet she yearns to solve the mystery of who this man is and who she is to him. When she's called upon to live at his estate and dance with him every Sunday at midnight, the mystery only deepens. Throughout this section of the book, I was hooked, and the balance of gorgeous imagery, Grace's palpable longing, and the mystery surrounding Master La Rosa elevated this book to as close to perfection as anything I've read in a long, long time. However, as the story progressed past the halfway mark, things faltered for me a bit. I felt like I figured things out faster than Grace did, which sometimes made me feel as if I was just waiting for her to catch up, and the latter half of the book takes even more forays into imagery and metaphor, which slowed the pacing somewhat when I felt as though it should be speeding up, instead. I also found Grace less sympathetic as time went on and she made choices that didn't resonate with me--she's inexplicably cruel to the other ballerinas at times in ways that felt condescending to me ("The Master picked me, not you, what do you know about anything?"), and her treatment of the "love interest" (it's questionable whether I can really call him that?) left me mildly baffled. She's hot, then cold, then trusts him, then turns on him entirely based on the spurious word of someone else. Which was very frustrating when it was very obvious what was really going on. Had Grace been more consistent and astute, I think I would have enjoyed the latter half of this book more. And the ending, while appropriate to the story, left me feeling a bit empty. This may come down to the fact that I'm a heavy reader of romantasy with standard HEA endings. This is not that, but if you like your books to take you somewhere unexpected, definitely give this one a try. Overall, I give it high marks for originality, atmosphere, and lyrical prose that burrows under your skin and haunts you even after you've put the book down. I'm very curious to see what Alyssa Wees does next!

For full-disclosure, I started reading this because the cover is beautiful and the description made me think it would be a retelling of Phantom of the Opera.

Well. It was not. It sort of started out like that, and then it sort of turned into something that resembled Beauty and the Beast. And then it sort of turned into something that resembled Hades and Persephone. And then the ending didn't really fit with any of the retellings. Which is all totally fine- a retelling doesn't have to 100% match the source material to be enjoyable.

But in all of those stories, I feel sympathy towards the Phantom, the Beast, and Hades. I did not feel any sympathy towards the Master, and it felt like the story wanted me to feel sorry for him. I did not like the Master and honestly thought he was too creepy to be any sort of romantic interest.

I also just didn't connect with the writing style, and I had trouble following some of the descriptions. I didn't really like Grace as a character either (particularly as a POV character).

So... unfortunately, this one was not for me.

The best way I can describe this book is both beautiful and surreal. Historical fiction with a fantasy twist. A strange twist between HadesxPersephone/Phantom of the Opera. To try and even explain this plot seems honestly daunting in thought. The characters are intriguing and well written, the plot leaves you guessing at almost every turn, and the ending left me craving a second book.

This book was weird as hell, but I absolutely loved every page.