🩰 NOCTURNE 🎻

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4/5)

This book was pretty good! It delivers on its premise as a Phantom of the Opera retelling set in the 1930s Chicago ballet scene without feeling like a carbon copy of the stage musical or book. The book begins with some recognizable plot points, but quickly evolves into its own story with some unique takes on magic. My only criticism is that the middle third of the book is a little slow and repetitive plot-wise, but the ending makes up for it with plenty of action and surprising decisions from the main character. Also, there could have been more ballet in the back half of the book. This is marketed as a new adult fantasy (I guess for its darker themes?), but there’s nothing too graphic or explicit for teenagers in here - more appropriate in the YA section than ACOTAR, in my opinion. If you’re looking for a short standalone dark fantasy romance, consider picking up Nocturne.

Nocturne came out on 2/21 and is available at most book retailers. Many thanks to @delreybooks and @netgalley for allowing me to read and review an eARC of this book. All thoughts and opinions in this review are my own.

Read if you like…
🩰 The Phantom of the Opera
🩰 The Little Mermaid
🩰 The Red Shoes

If you loved fairy tales and ballerinas as a kid, and have been searching for a grown up story to fill that niche, Nocturne is the perfect book for you.

The story takes place in a fantastical version of Depression-era Chicago and focuses on Grace, a prima ballerina who takes on a mysterious patron. Despite being labeled as a fantasy book, I think Nocturne is a story that is accessible to everyone. While it is labeled as fantasy, the world-building is light and easy to follow. It also incorporates elements of romance, family drama, mystery, and light horror. Maybe it’s the cover, but for some reason this book gave me big winter vibes, so if you’re planning on checking it out maybe save it for when the weather turns colder.

Nocturne is out now. Thanks to Random House and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I found this book slow and confusing. It was extremely difficult for me to get through this book. The book focused more on world building then on fleshing out the world that was explained.

I wanted to love this book, but it’s just so overwritten. It feels like a love affair with the words at the expense of pacing, plot, and character development.

Im including my instagram post and review on this stunning book. https://www.instagram.com/p/CpknYD6roJ9/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

DNF'd at 70% - I really wanted to love this book, but it was just too slow for me that by the time something started happening I was no longer invested. I think the author described the world of this book wonderfully and I loved all the lingering descriptions and the magical atmosphere, but I needed a bit more plot earlier on. I might come back and finish it one day, but for now this is where I stop. I do think this book has an audience and the cover is gorgeous, it just wasn't for me!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for a copy. All opinions are my own.

This was a dnf for me. The characters weren’t very interesting and the pace rather slow. Not a story I’d recommend.

I wanted so desperately to love this book. I fell in love with the cover at fist sight and the premise sounded so intriguing that I knew it was going to catapult to the top of my TBR. I was extremely grateful to NetGalley for sending me an arc copy and I dove in right away. The review took much longer because honestly, I was hoping that after some reflection, I would look upon Nocturne a little more favorably. Alas, I did not. While I was entertained by the story somewhat, I had great difficulty with some of the prose, and it made it difficult for me to ultimately enjoy the plot progression. I felt like there were plot holes and character actions that were never fully explained or explored, leaving me wanting by the end. I finished this book with more questions than I started with and I never really developed any connection to any of the characters. The writing appears beautiful and lyrical, but the story felt so flat to me that I couldn’t recommend it in good conscience.

I really wanted to like this book because of the premise, but it just lacked in execution. It read like it was a first draft that could really have benefitted from a few rounds of editing. The bones of an incredible story and world were there, but it fell flat.


*Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.*

I wanted to like this book more than I did. I enjoyed the parts about ballet, and the mystery of the patron (at first) and even the scenes later in the book but it just takes so long for anything to happen, and the book feels very young adult to me. I am sure someone will like it, just not me.

DNF. I just wasn’t that into it. It started off good, and after 1/3 of the way through the book it got super dark and disturbing

I got about a third of the way into this book. This is typically a book I would really enjoy, but the writing was too much imagery for me. It made it hard to read. Perhaps this is one I'll try to return to in the future. Otherwise, the right idea is there.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Thank you NetGalley.

It seems like my experience with this book was similar to other reviewers. It truly felt like this book would have benefitted from another round of editing. There was a LOT of .. information in this book that we could have done without... Sentences / chapters didnt' add much to the plot / storyline.

The character development was good...but there were times I had to PUSH myself to finish this book ... unfortunately.

Way too much purple prose for me. I ended up skimming the whole second half. I don't think my students will enjoy this.

I almost didn’t finish reading this one. Not because it wasn’t okay, the story was there and the characters were compelling. To preface, I was granted the privilege to read an ARC (advanced reading copy) through NetGalley, and I have to say that I felt like an ARC. There were plenty of times when I felt that something needed to be clarified for me to understand continuity or that something needed to be trimmed because I felt that it was superfluous. I say this because those things, in my opinion, felt like it didn’t actually advance or enhance the plot in any way. These things pulled me away from the story, and I disliked that. I really hoped those were things that would be fixed by the end edit. The only reason I gave this four stars was because I couldn’t give it 3 1/2 in Goodreads.
The story and magic is intriguing. The retelling of Phantom of the Opera is genuine and I enjoyed the premise even if I didn’t enjoy the actual end product. My personal opinion of the book came from me not looking forward to finishing it, but mainly because I guessed the ending before I was even close to it.

Oh my! This book was gorgeous and immersive! I have to hand it to the author, her writing was such beautiful prose, it didn't even touch my scale of flowery because it was descriptive and ever-flowing.

As far as the plot, it made me want to go back to my personal dance days. It encapsulated exactly the way dance and music alone or combined make people feel.

Nocturne takes place in 1930s Chicago, and it has all of the atmospheric presence you’d expect a book set in this time and place to have!

Some things I enjoyed:

🩰 This feels very much like a Beauty and the Beast type story, with all the tragedy and whimsical mystery and infuriating trauma of the original story.

🩰 The artistic expression (both through music and dance) was quite lovely!

🩰 Parts of the book kind of felt like a delicious fever dream, like the ballroom scenes from the movie Labyrinth or the book Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.



Some things I didn’t:

🩰 I picked up this arc because it sounded so whimsical, but it has a lot of those dark romance vibes, and that’s definitely not my kind of book. I think that maybe I wasn’t the target audience for it, and that’s okay! Dark romance just isn’t for me.

🩰 I was torn on the prose. Much of it was beautiful and evocative, but it did feel like there were overly-drawn out descriptions and larger-than-necessary words used in places where simplicity may have been better for the story.

🩰 The ending felt a bit confusing, and it went from feeling like a Beauty and the Beast retelling to some sort of Phantom of the Opera situation, but more tumultuous and macabre. It didn’t feel in sync with the rest of the book, though I can’t really put my finger on why.


Overall I thought it was a decent story even though it wasn’t really my style. If you’re into dark romance retellings, you’ll probably enjoy it!

Thanks to Del Rey and Netgalley for the advanced copy!

'Nocturne' is a book with immense potential, potential that ultimately ought to have been honed with another round of editing and revision. The story idea is superb and directly appeals to a specific audience of 2010 girlies who love their ballet motifs and Phantom of the Opera callbacks (I know I do). The cover art is gorgeous and the themes running throughout the book made me instantly want to read it-- props to both the artist and the writer for knowing how to catch someone's eye.

Where it becomes a let-down, however, is in the prose. Unfortunately, first person perspective writing has over-saturated the young adult/fantasy genre, and I feel as though the chosen perspective does a disservice to the story. The writer exhibits clear talent with gorgeous imagery and a grasp on what kind of story she wants to tell-- but where it falls flat is the execution.

There is little indication that this story takes place in the 1930s or even Chicago, as the dialogue sounds extremely anachronistic (beyond occasional attempts at period-specific racism, I suppose) and the city itself is given little flavor beyond occasional setting name-dropping. Speaking as a Chicagoan, there's a world of potential that could've been utilized in making the setting important (not to mention the long and interesting history of ballet in Chicago as well). As it stands, I'm not sure why Chicago is important as a setting, or why Grace's Italian immigrant backstory is important beyond providing a tragic catalyst.

Tropes are not bad; after all, there's a reason humanity adores fairytales so much. And I wanted to love this fairytale deeply, as it seemed specifically written for me: a working-class Chicagoan who loves ballet and the violin, who thinks Hades & Persephone-esque pairings are the bees' knees. But this book needed a few more drafts and a bit of polishing-- as it stands, there's a good idea in there. It just needed more time.

My library has purchased a copy of this novel based on my recommendation. We are looking forward to providing it to our college students on the lending shelf.

This is probably best for a reader who is coming in with a plan to enjoy the words on the page and the languid journey sentences can take. Someone who is here for the "mysterious man in love with a fragile woman" and can appreciate the parallels between different stories ( Beauty and the Beast, Phantom of the Opera, etc) without being lost in those parallels and expecting those stories to be told. Someone who is charmed by the bizarre. I personal love those many wrappings, but in a way it distracts too much from the story being told. It was easy to be lost in these trappings, which is what I want from a book sometimes.