Review: Dance of Shadows by Yelena Black

Big shout out where shout outs are due, thank you to the Reading Room for my review copy of this book. 

Dance of Shadows is a YA paranormal romance set in the world of a New York based ballet school and tells the story of Vanessa Alder who wants to solve the mystery why her older sister, Margaret disappeared from the same school three years earlier. Other strange and sinister things are going on at the school, students are disappearing and Vanessa isn't sure who she should trust, her loving older boyfriend Zep, or the mysterious and nasty Justin.

I found Dance of Shadows to be quite an intriguing mystery and found myself turning the pages as I wanted to know more about what happened to Margaret and what sinister forces were at work at the school. Justin makes for quite an interesting hero/anti-hero. Zep, or Zepplin Grey was less interesting, but boys who have little more than good looks and the ability to spin out the odd insincere compliment rarely are. I guess who the villain may be and was right, but what may have happened to Margaret remains cloudy and leads on to a sequel.

That said, and perhaps it is just my age showing here, I felt the book was lacking something. We never really get to know any of Vanessa's classmates apart from basic stereotypes--i.e. Blaine is gay, Steffie is Vanessa's best friend and Anna is beautiful, popular, dating Zep and hates Vanessa. It would have been nice to see their characters expanded a little, but perhaps this will happen in the sequel. Some of the drama/horror wraps up a little too nicely, but again, perhaps there is more to come in the next book. Overall, this is a sincere and macabre effort, but probably isn't a book for anyone outside of the intended teenage audience.

Comments

shelleyrae @ book'd out said…
I agree with much of your review Kathryn :)

Shelleyrae @ Book'd Out
18 August 2013 at 21:27
Kathryn White said…
Thank you Shelleyrae :)
18 August 2013 at 21:29
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more