The week before that, encore meant doing echappées until the entire bottom half of my body went numb. The ballet world was a no-brainer. That's what I know. And I love a good romance novel. I wondered why there's no romance novel set in the ballet world. Ballet is so beautiful, so sexy, the dressing rooms and the tutus and the leotards. I wrote something I felt I would want to read. For some reason, my default is to defend her shit as reasonable. “It’s rehearsal—she’s got to be hard on us.”

He looks like Robert Graham in his younger days, but with a better hairline. He has a mischievousness to him. A playfulness in his eyes. Never-ending torture, too. It has taken me twenty years and counting to hold my hands correctly, and every single day I am still told that a finger is out of place. Usually it’s my thumb, jutting out just a bit too much. I catch a glimpse of it on a rare moment when I am not thinking about the stage and my body, and the relationship between them. I hate my thumb. I hate it like it’s out to get me. And in a way, it is. I’m supposed to have control of it and yet…I don’t.What?” Then I remember that I had laughed out loud. Like a crazy person. “Oh, that. No. Nothing is funny.” When I dance I feel like a vessel. I don’t experience hunger or thirst. Pain and exhaustion take on a different sort of tolerable life. Carnal desire is set aside from the dance itself. The hands on you don’t feel the same as they would off the stage. But tonight, it is something different. I am deeply aware of the heat from his body as it touches my skin … I am unable to feel nothing.” Encore meant I want more. Encore meant don’t stop, keep going. Encore meant, I don’t want to say goodbye—not just yet. Sylvie and Jocelyn have their own chapters where they tell their story to the reader on their own terms. Both describe their perceptions of their past and present – starting with when they first entered the NAB. It is never confusing and instead highlights the tragedy of what Sylvie went through. The pacing is consistently a medium pace that only slowed down on a few brief occasions, making this book a pleasant read in terms of pace.

So edgy, so different, with a constant undercurrent of tension whether on the stage or in the bedroom… Raw and addictive. I loved it.’

nothing. That might be everyone else’s problem with it, but it’s exactly what I appreciate about it. I am not sure why this is being marketed as a romance because it most definitely is not one. Yes, there is sex and quite a lot of it, but most of it isn’t between the hero and the heroine, and in the end, there is no real happily ever after. I was expecting so much more from this book, and while there were aspects I did like, it was overshadowed by the many problems this story has. The heat from her body comes at me like an assault. Her energy is always like that … I feel like prey in the wild. When she’s around, I can feel her there. As if she’s waiting to pounce.” She did not tell you that you don’t have passion. Not at all. And neither did I, by the way.” He remains expressionless. “She said you’re in your head. This is not a damning insult.” Diana is the ballet mistress, which means she is basically like the coach, and we’re her players for her to prep for the big game. She begs more of every position, straightening every line in our physique, making us bend until we nearly break while remaining as straight as a pane of glass—all while managing to look as peaceful and easy and effortless as a weeping willow.