“I never thought I’d feel heartache like this. I’d read in books about heartache, and never understood it. I thought it was just words on paper that the poets wrote. But now I well understand this feeling. It’s physical pain, sharp pangs that I got every time I remembered things I should have told Sergei, but didn’t. Things I could have done to show him that I loved him but didn’t.”

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This book is definitely a book for figure skating fans. It’s not a memoir that you could just pick up and understand the meaning behind - the history that Katia and Sergei made and the impact they had on pairs skating. I really enjoyed getting the chance to learn about their career on a more personal level and  how they overcame the challenges they faced both growing up and competing in Russia, before and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. 

While I know that the grammar/prose would’ve been better if I read the original text rather than the English translation (though that wouldn’t have been possible as I don’t understand Russian), I still loved the story as it was told; slightly stilted in language, but emotional, inspiring, and beautifully told in it’s own right.