Title: Dancing in the DarkAuthor: Robyn Bavati
Published: February 8th, 2013 (Flux)
Pages: 336
Source: for review
Rating: 3.5 stars
Synopsis from Goodreads: Ditty was born to dance, but she was also born Jewish. When her strictly religious parents won't let her take ballet lessons, Ditty starts to dance in secret. But for how long can she keep her two worlds apart? And at what cost?
A dramatic and moving story about a girl who follows her dream, and finds herself questioning everything she believes in.
A dramatic and moving story about a girl who follows her dream, and finds herself questioning everything she believes in.
I'm going to start this review by saying that there should definitely be more books about dancing! I love reading them so much! It almost doesn't matter how it's written, I'll just love it anyway.
Dancing in the Dark is about Ditty, a Jewish girl, who discovers that she loves dancing at a young age while she's secretly watching TV There's only one problem: her parents are strictly religious and she's forbidden to dance (or to watch TV for that matter). So she starts to take lessons in secret and becomes very good.
The dancing parts in this books were just amazing. I loved to read how Ditty became better and better and would have been even better if her parents would just give her the chance. She follows several lessons in a week after a couple of years and she gets away with it for a very long time. I didn't know much about Jewish religion, so I learned quite a bit through this book. It made this book even more special.
So why did I only give it 3.5 stars? This has mostly to do with the long time span in the story. It starts when Ditty is around 10 or 11 years old and ends when she's 18. Sometimes it felt like things were rushed in the story. Some parts just had to be told in as few words as possible and I never really like it when a story feels rushed. Also in some parts of the book the secret keeping is controlling. And although I understood she had to keep it a secret, I was also pretty amazed her parents never find out in all these years. I don't know about you guys, but I could pull of the same lie like once or twice, but definitely not more. Although I must add I'm a terrible liar! This distracted me a bit from the story, so that's why I didn't give it any more stars.
If you love books about dancing you definitely want to read this one! The parts about dancing are awesome. Being a dancer myself I know the passion she feels and that's always amazing to read about!
