Title: Phantoms Dance
Author: Lesa Howard
Pages: 342
Publisher: Boot in the Door
Pub Date: April 6th, 2014
Source: Netgalley
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Christine Dadey's family uprooted their lives and moved to Houston for her to attend the prestigious Rousseau Academy of Dance. Now, two years later, Christine struggles to compete among the Academy's finest dancers, her parents are on the brink of divorce, and she's told no one about her debilitating performance anxiety and what she's willing to do to cope with it. Erik was a ballet prodigy, a savant, destined to be a star on the world's stage, but a suspicious fire left Erik's face horribly disfigured. Now, a lonely phantom forced to keep his scars hidden, he spends his nights haunting the theater halls, mourning all he's lost. Then, from behind the curtain he sees the lovely Christine. The moldable, malleable Christine. Drawn in by Erik's unwavering confidence, Christine allows herself to believe Erik's declarations that he can transform her into the dancer she longs to be. But Christine's hope of achieving her dreams may be her undoing when she learns Erik is not everything he claims. And before long, Erik's shadowy past jeopardizes Christine's unstable present as his obsession with her becomes hopelessly entangled with his plans for revenge.
Phantom of the Opera is one of my favorite shows, and it’s
the only show I’ve seen on Broadway so a retelling of this classic story with
teenagers and in Texas? Sure! Why not?
The life of a Ballerina is never just glamorous, its full of
hard work, dieting, and stress. It wasn’t any different for Christine Dadey who
uprooted her whole life and moved to Houston, Texas to be in a better school.
Even with all the effort Christine put into her dance, she couldn’t get over
her performance anxiety and she couldn’t put emotion into her Giselle dance (Black Swan anyone?).
Realizing that she wants more from life than just ballet,
she starts working on her social life. First move is getting a boyfriend, Raoul
Chaney. He’s a football player and she’s a ballerina and they make it work
after Christine is forced to help teach the football team plies with her best friend Jenna. She keeps her life together until
she finds out that her parents are getting a divorce and her teacher Ms.Hahn
wont let her audition for the second company she decides to just quit ballet. Then
she mets him.
When a hidden male voice starts talking to me from behind a
curtain in an empty theater I would run. Forget asking for his name or who he
is, you just run, especially if there’s a rumor of a phantom and robberies to
prove it. Yet Christine takes the bait, he promises that he can make her a
better dancer and tells her he used to dance with all the great ballet
companies. As soon as she thinks meeting some random guy in an empty theater isn’t
a good idea he tells her his heartbreaking story making it impossible for her
to leave him.
This is when things start getting tricky, so far nothing had
happened in this story was getting bland. I was just about to give up when lo
and behold someone snooping around the school ended up with a broken leg.
Things go downhill from there but also very juicy.
I’m not 100% sure how I feel about the ending, there was
some information left out about Erik and Christine really never got it together
throughout the book.
Overall it was a
pretty great retelling but wouldn’t work as a standalone, or for someone who doesn’t
completely love the Phantom.
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