Review: Girl Through Glass by Sari Wilson

Girl Through Glass

by Sari Wilson

Publisher: Harper

Pages: 304

Format: ARC

Buy the Book: Amazon

Goodreads:  In the roiling summer of 1977, eleven-year-old Mira is an aspiring ballerina in the romantic, highly competitive world of New York City ballet. Enduring the mess of her parent’s divorce, she finds escape in dance—the rigorous hours of practice, the exquisite beauty, the precision of movement, the obsessive perfectionism. Ballet offers her control, power, and the promise of glory. It also introduces her to forty-seven-year-old Maurice DuPont, a reclusive, charismatic balletomane who becomes her mentor.

Over the course of three years, Mira is accepted into the prestigious School of American Ballet run by the legendary George Balanchine, and eventually becomes one of “Mr. B’s girls”—a dancer of rare talent chosen for greatness. As she ascends higher in the ballet world, her relationship with Maurice intensifies, touching dark places within herself and sparking unexpected desires that will upend both their lives.

In the present day, Kate, a professor of dance at a Midwestern college, embarks on a risky affair with a student that threatens to obliterate her career and capsizes the new life she has painstakingly created for her reinvented self. When she receives a letter from a man she’s long thought dead, Kate is hurled back into the dramas of a past she thought she had left behind.

Kritters Thoughts:  In one storyline we are in 1977 in New York in the ballet world as a young girl is yearning to make it and is doing almost anything to get her place in the professional ballet world.  The other storyline is present day as a professor who teaches dance history and things of that nature and she gets a letter that takes her back in time and she must go to New York City to confront the past and get some answers.  At a certain point these storylines will converge.

As usual, I liked one storyline over one - Mira in 1977 as she is a young naive thing entering the ballet world.  As a young girl who loved ballet fiercely, but knew from day one it would never be a profession, I could semi understand Mira and her drive for perfection.  I loved reading a girl's story as she is learning about herself and trying to decide what she wants her future to look like.

This book had some hard moments as it deals with some very difficult issues and both to young Mira and in Kate's story.  It was both interesting and hard to read about the what one would think the pink ballet world mixed with deep dark issues - even though I know that they are there.  As a ballet fan I liked this one more than if this story took place in another "world."


Rating: enjoyable, but didn't leave me wanting more

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I received one copy of this book free of charge from TLC Book Tours.  I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for receipt of the book; rather, the opinions expressed in this review are my own.