Happy Friday bookish people! Today is my spot on the book tour for The Turnout by Megan Abbott. Thank you to Grace Vincent and Virago books for sending me a copy to read and review.
In this book review I will give star ratings to four categories and I will write a little about each one. I will try to keep it as spoiler free as possible. I hope you enjoy my book review.
The Turnout Plot:
I was so excited to get to read this book, I have always liked ballet and this continues with literary ballet plots as well. I loved how this book takes you through the story, the things that you think are important aren’t always and the things you think aren’t important may turn out to be much more important than you think. One of the parts I enjoyed the most was the exploration of the relationship between the sisters, there was a beautiful balance between the ballet, the changing mystery and the character relationships. It all paired together brilliantly.
I especially liked how the psychological mystery escalated with the timeline heading towards the end performance of The Nutcracker, I could feel the tension building with every page.
The Turnout Characters:
There’s four main characters in this book, Dara, Marie, Charlie and Derek – each one has their own personal experiences that they are struggling with and this is threaded through the story intricately. I must admit I didn’t like Dara for most of the book but by the end I understood her and why she was the way she was.
The Turnout Writing and Dialogue:
I didn’t think I was going to get along that well with the style of this writing however, I found myself being completely absorbed in it, and so the story. The writing style was the perfect compliment to the mystery that was unfolding.
The Turnout Overall:
I gave this book four stars overall because, although some parts were predictable, I enjoyed the journey that this book took me on.
Blurb/Synopsis:
Bestselling and award-winning author Megan Abbott’s revelatory, mesmerizing, and game-changing new novel set against the hothouse of a family-run ballet studio, and an interloper who arrives to bring down the carefully crafted Eden-like facade.
Ballet flows through their veins. Dara and Marie Durant were dancers since birth, with their long necks and matching buns and pink tights, homeschooled and trained by their mother. Decades later the Durant School of Dance is theirs. The two sisters, together with Charlie, Dara’s husband and once their mother’s prize student, inherited the school after their parents died in a tragic accident nearly a dozen years ago. Marie, warm and soft, teaches the younger students; Dara, with her precision, trains the older ones; and Charlie, back broken after years of injuries, rules over the back office. Circling around each other, the three have perfected a dance, six days a week, that keeps the studio thriving. But when a suspicious accident occurs, just at the onset of the school’s annual performance of The Nutcracker, a season of competition, anxiety, and exhilaration, an interloper arrives and threatens the delicate balance of everything they’ve worked for.
Taut and unnerving, The Turnout is Megan Abbott at the height of her game. With uncanny insight and hypnotic writing, it is a sharp and strange dissection of family ties and sexuality, femininity and power, and a tale that is both alarming and irresistible.
That’s it for this book review, I hope you all enjoyed it!
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