While I've read a lot of books about competitive academia, whether it be magical or 'normal', I haven't read much from the point of view of an athlete/performer in training, especially not ballet. So for that alone I found this concept interesting, and I liked the idea of seeing how a friendship can evolve in and be shaped by such a competitive space (where only 1 can ever really pass). However, this really was not my thing at all. I found the setting itself interesting, but the story that took place in it just couldn't grip me.

First off, I just never felt connected to the characters at all. While Kate and Marine were friends, both of their POVs contained such harsh criticisms of the other that I never felt like I could positively look on either, and their opinions of each other bled into the POVs of each other. For example, Kate always called Marine young and naive, so you can't help but read Marine's chapters in that way as well. And Marine thought of Kate as boy-obsessed, which made me hyper-focus on how little she seemed to want to actually dance and more just wanted to find love? On top of that, I rarely got the feeling that either Marine or Kate actually liked to dance at all, since while they both definitely had their reasons for being in the program and trying their best, it wasn't for love of ballet but always for someone else. It made the entire competition to be the best fall flat, because they didn't want to win to join Opera necessarily (except this rang true for Kate later, but her desire for this often intermingled with her desire for some guy), they just wanted to finish someone else's dream/impress someone who wasn't there/etc. And lastly, both Kate and Marine struggled with a lot in their goal to be the best, but since their motivations weren't there for me, the struggles fell flat as well. Marine's struggle with eating rang truer than Kate delving into drugs, but it still didn't fully work for me because the development felt sudden. Their friendship also felt flimsy at the best of times, and I didn't quite understand how it had ever really worked out (their promise to each other also conflicted heavily with their individual dreams of winning, so I'm not quite sure how they ever rationalized this to themselves?).

Honestly the ending was solid in the sense that it concluded their individual character arcs and involved them finding their actual dreams and going for it, but it felt way too miraculous. Both of them just suddenly had solutions to their major problems and that seemed to be that. I also feel like there never was a good reconciliation between Kate and Marine, and the story focused more and more on their relationships with others near the end, so it feels a little half-finished in that regard.

Overall, this book just didn't work for me, as I feel like it tried to take a little too much on without necessarily having characters strong enough to carry across those problems well. I did enjoy the setting and the descriptions of dance were nice, but it just wasn't enough to make up for the rest for me.