First Position by Melissa Brayden

First Position
by Melissa Brayden
Pages: 264
Date: August 16 2016
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Series: connected to the books 'Waiting in the Wings' and the Soho Loft series

Review
Rating: 5.5 out of 5.0
Read: July 4 to 5 2016

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley and Bold Strokes Books for an honest review.

(For those who care about such things, two people from Waiting in the Wings appear and have relatively significant roles); just an FYI in case someone would wish to read that one before this book here (which I’d recommend doing)

This story has seemingly a cast of thousands, but two of them are the most important for today’s discussion, both of whom are roughly 27 years of age. Natalie Frederico and Anastasia Mikhelson.

Natalie Frederico is something of a wild child, rebellious type, who has great dancing talent and spent some time in a prestigious ballet school but found it too restraining, controlling, rule-based and so left without graduating. As the book opens, Natalie is wrapping up a show in Los Angeles, a show she created that mixes classical, and modern dance with ‘mixed media’. A show that’s fabulous successful and always is sold out. As you might expect in such a situation . . . heh, no. Natalie is very much an ‘art before profit!’ type, and so she and her show are being kicked out of their building because she only charges $10 a ticket. A man wanders by, after the last show (actually the next day, but I needed to work in the ‘last show’ part) and offers Natalie a job with the New York City Ballet. Natalie doesn’t really want to have anything to do with ballet, but she doesn’t exactly have any other opportunities pounding on her door, so she agrees to head off to New York.

One little tidbit about a ball and chain around Natalie’s ankle. Always a good thing to toss into a romance story, no? The young Natalie happens to have an adoring girlfriend (I think her name might be Morgan, though it might be something else – the current book I’m reading has someone named Mrs. Morgan Morgan in it, so that’s causing me doubts about the name; okay, looked it up – the girlfriend’s name is in fact Morgan. Weird - that). Right, so, heading off to New York, has a girlfriend – Natalie offers to bring Morgan along. Morgan notes that she would rather just stick around Los Angeles. Veg out. Party. Maybe Morgan is less of an adoring puppy, eh? Well, they decide on trying that ‘long distance’ thing.

Anastasia Mikhelson is the other lead in this here book. She’s fabulous talented, gifted, the kind who can cause grown men to weep with joy upon seeing how technically accurate, how flawless her movements are, while also shuddering in despair at how lifeless, emotionless Ana’s dancing tends to be. The book opens with Anastasia having spent the last nine years slowly moving up the ballet hierarchy. This year though, this year will be hers!

When a new season starts, Ana is warming up in a crowd of ballet dancers, though at the same time somewhat off by herself, since she’s kind of stand-offish (her co-workers call her ‘Frozen’). Just then someone bursts through the door – a late arrival. Ana feels vaguely sad for the girl – first day and she’s late – making a bad impression for her first day as an apprentice (see, Natalie’s addition to the Ballet company is kind of abnormal, atypical, both from not being a ballet school graduate, and for leaping over several levels to land at soloist position).

One thing leads to another and Ana realizes that she actually went to school, ballet school, with this other woman. And was annoyed/irritated by her at the time. And was actually happy when she had dropped out. But here she is again, in the unusual role of leaping up to soloist. Ana’s pissed.

Still, it’s her year. She’s going to lead in a show. She approaches the guy, Roger Eklund (the same guy who invited Natalie to the Ballet company), running that show, is told that she isn’t really right for the role – it calls for someone much better at expressing emotions through their dancing than Ana gives in performances. Ana begs. The guy agrees to watch Ana try out.

Later that afternoon – Ana, Natalie, and several others compete for the lead role of Mira, rehearse. Jason Morales is also there – he’s the lead male and . . . only one invited to the rehearsal (to play the role of Titus). Ana and Natalie compete. Ana’s technically perfect. Natalie’s emotionally perfect. Neither is perfect by themselves.

Roger decides to split the duties. Ana will dance three nights, Natalie three nights, and Jason will be Titus throughout.

To round things out – as noted Jason is Natalie and Anastasia’s dance partner in the show they are putting on. He is also madly in love with Anastasia and is not clued in to the fact that Anastasia doesn’t exactly feel the same way.

Right, so, that’s the basic set-up. Cast of thousands. Some come and go before you can blink and learn their name (the people who worked in Natalie’s Los Angeles show); others hang around like lead balloons (Jason). The two women work together to impart what they both know (Ana helping Natalie with technical stuff; Natalie helping Ana loosen up). And they grow closer together romantically and otherwise, while, in the background, are three ‘things’ – (1) girlfriend Morgan; (2) Ana’s father (super-duper great ballet dude); (3) injuries and the like natural to people who perform strenuous physical activities like professional ballet.

This is my seventh book by Brayden. As I mentioned in some review here or there, there’s a particular formula that Brayden seems to follow. A top-notch writer, so the reader can kind of forgive that formula usage. Except here – yes certain things occurred that kind of followed the formula framework, but it was the smoothest I’ve seen. Seemed natural, organic. Brilliant really.

There are really just two issues that I have with the book – (1) the unexpected entrance of odd ball uses of ‘merde’ (which I learned, along the way from outside the book sources, is something said in ballet) – each unexplained usage of the phrase jerked me out of the story (I mean, I know what it means when someone says to other ‘break a leg’, but merde?); (2) the book is a natural lovely organic story, near perfect in its way and . . . then an epilogue appeared that moved things from natural perfection to cutesy too perfect to breath perfection. Unfortunate that.

Regardless of these two issues, I found that the book is either the best I’ve read by Brayden or tied for first place. A very enjoyable book.

July 5 2016